Ten green bottles?

And if one green bottle should accidentally fall?
Imagine that each of us throws away a plastic bottle once a week...

Here in Sweden that would be around 9 million bottles a week, or 450 million bottles a year. In the USA it's a little over 300million a week ... or in a year around 15 billion bottles. Which is interesting as in 2006 Americans threw away around 22 billion plastic bottles...

You do only throw away one bottle every week don't you????

While you're imagining where all those bottles went to, some food for thought...
In the US around 30% of plastic bottles, and 45% of soda and beer cans got recycled in 2006. Hurrah!!!

...while here in Sweden over 80% of bottles and 85% of cans (a total of 1.4 billion - three a week each) were recycled

That there's such a difference could be because Sweden runs a mandatory deposit scheme for most bottles and cans. When you buy you pay a little extra and you only get it back when you take the empties back.

I don't buy a lot of bottled drinks and I have to say it's a pain storing things to take back to the shop - particularly cans as they have to remain round to go through the machine that reads the bar code - but you have to admit it seems to work. :-)

The bit I particularly like about the system is the 'biståndsknappen'. When you've stood in the shop and stuffed all your bottles through the hole in the wall you get a receipt you can redeem at the till.. or, if you press the button, it all goes to charity.