The Long and Short of Single-Use Plastic

If you twist a cap off a plastic water or soda bottle, do you ever think about the journey that bottle took to reach your hands? Or what will happen to it after you're finished with it?

Single-use plastic has become nearly impossible to avoid, outpacing other traditional packaging like paper, glass and aluminum. This is due in part to the fact that it's inexpensive to produce and can be sold as more convenient and durable than other materials. But it takes a lot of time and valuable resources to make plastic items that we use only once, often for mere minutes. And all the plastic we make becomes waste that never goes away. Throughout its lifecycle, plastic also impacts our soil, water, and air, affecting every living thing on the planet, including people.

A Story That Begins Millions of Years Ago

Amazingly, the story of that plastic bottle begins back when dinosaurs roamed. Single-use plastic is derived from oil, a fossil fuel. Fossil fuels are the oil, coal and natural gas created when plants and animals that lived millions of years ago died and decomposed. Their remains were buried deep in the Earth where heat and pressure transformed them into carbon- and hydrogen-rich liquids, solids and gases. These materials are nonrenewable because of how long they took to form and the fact that there are limited supplies.

Extracting, Transporting, Refining

To turn oil into the petrochemicals used to make plastics, the raw materials first must be pulled from the Earth. This can be done on land and offshore through drilling or hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. Once it's extracted, crude oil is shipped, trucked, sent through pipelines or otherwise transported to refining facilities. Here, it's heated to very high temperatures and turned into components like gasoline, kerosene and propane.

The Building Blocks of PET

Ethylene is one of these components derived from crude oil. As it cools during the refining process, ethylene solidifies into small, clear granules. These are polyethylene pellets, which are the building blocks for a type of plastic called polyethylene terephthalate or PET. PET is used to make plastic beverage bottles as well as other food packaging and products like polyester fabrics.

To make a plastic bottle, polyethylene pellets are heated to more than 200 degrees until they melt. That thick liquid is injected into a mold that shapes it into a compact, hollow tube called a preform. After being quickly cooled, these preforms are then heated again until they're soft and pliable. They go into another mold, and air is used to stretch and inflate the preform into a hollow bottle. Cold water quickly cools and hardens the molded plastic bottles, so they're ready to be packaged and shipped to a bottling plant.

Ready to Ship to Stores

At the bottling plant, the plastic bottles are cleaned, labeled, filled with liquid, and sealed with plastic caps. (These plastic bottle caps are often made from a different plastic polymer, not PET.) Now the bottled beverages are ready to be distributed to stores.

At every step, from extraction and refining to production and transport, the process of making plastic bottles uses a lot of water and energy, gives off climate-change-causing emissions, and negatively impacts human health. These health risks particularly affect people living in low-income communities in states like Louisiana where fossil fuel and petrochemical production plants are concentrated.

Designed to Last Forever

And here you are, taking a water or soda bottle from the shelf. Your part in this story might last just a few minutes, maybe longer, but probably less than an hour. And then you might throw the empty bottle into a recycling bin or trash can and probably don't ever think of it again.

"The problem with single-use plastic is that it's designed to last forever but only used for a few minutes," said Melissa Valliant, communications director at Beyond Plastics.

Four Final Destinations

Once a plastic bottle or other single-use plastic item reaches the end of its useful life and is disposed of, it ends up in one of four places: a landfill, incinerator, recycling facility, or the environment. Plastic waste never actually disappears, though, and there are health and environmental impacts associated with each of these four destinations.

Landfill

Often the trash we throw away ends up in a landfill. In landfills, organic materials like food waste and paper products eventually break down completely. Plastics, though, break up into smaller pieces that never fully disintegrate. Plastic in landfills leaches toxic chemicals into the soil and water and releases harmful gases like methane into the air. Landfills also contribute to habitat loss and deforestation.

Incinerator

Another destination for household waste is an incinerator where it's burned. Incinerators spew out carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change, and other types of air pollution. When it's burned, plastic releases toxic chemicals into the air and negatively affects air quality.

Just as industrial facilities related to plastic production are mostly located in low-income communities, so too are landfills and incinerators. This means that people living in these communities are not only more acutely affected by the negative health impacts of plastic production, but also its disposal. In the U.S. and around the world, plastic pollution is an environmental justice issue.

Recycling Facility

Recycling is often billed as the answer to plastic waste, but the truth is that it falls far short. A 2022 report from Beyond Plastics found that less than 6% of plastic in the United States is recycled.

"Plastic is an inherently nonrecyclable material," Melissa explained. "An old glass bottle can be recycled into a new glass bottle. A cardboard box can be recycled into a new paper product. But it does not work that way with plastics because of the countless combinations of chemicals, polymers and colors, and different regulations in each county and city. Plus, plastic degrades each time it is recycled, meaning even recyclable plastics like PET can't be recycled more than once or twice. They often become part of synthetic carpeting or clothing—materials that will eventually end up in a landfill or incinerator. So, recycling doesn't prevent plastic waste from being disposed of, it just delays it."

The Environment

A lot of plastic also continues to end up in the environment, whether it's blown out of a trash can or thrown out a car window. Globally, it's estimated that the equivalent of more than 2,000 truckloads of plastic waste ends up in the ocean every day. Plastic beverage bottles were the third most common item found during coastal cleanups all over the world in 2024, according to data from the 2024-25 International Coastal Cleanup report. Plastic in the environment might break up into tiny pieces, but it lingers forever. This not only impacts wildlife but also people. Microplastics are now in our food, water and air. They have been found in our blood, brains and organs. Researchers are studying how microplastics impact human health.

Power in Our Choices

The ubiquity of single-use plastics and the scale of the plastic pollution problem can make solutions feel out of reach. But we have power in our choices.

"Each time you opt to skip a single-use bottle and instead fill up a reusable bottle or grab a soda in an aluminum can, you are actively combatting climate change and stopping plastic pollution," points out Allie Tilson, the Aquarium's senior manager of sustainability and conservation operations.

The Aquarium is moving toward eliminating all single-use plastics in our buildings. Our gift shops do not offer plastic bags, we replaced disposable plastic products in our cafes with compostable or reusable options, and we continue to phase out single-use plastics from our other operations. With the addition of water bottle filling stations and the removal of single-use plastics from our cafes, we estimate that at least 300,000 water and soft drink bottles have been removed from the waste stream each year.

We also advocate to stop plastic pollution on a broader scale. According to Director of Conservation Policy Maggie Ostdahl, the Aquarium works with many others to pass public policies that reduce plastic production, shift more responsibility to the companies that create the items we use every day, incentivize behavior change (like bottle deposit and Bring Your Own Bag bills), and phase out particularly problematic products. Bottle deposit return programs, Bring Your Own Bag laws and various states prohibiting foam takeout containers are all examples of policy solutions.

"When it comes to single-use plastics, there is not one big, perfect solution," Maggie says, "but there are plenty of impactful and important actions that help create system change. The scale of what we're facing and what's at stake mean that all of us have a part to play to turn down the tap of plastic pollution."

And it can start with choosing to use a refillable bottle, ideally made of metal or glass, or buy soda in recyclable cans or glass bottles instead of picking plastic.