In USA, sales of all plastic soda bottles jumped from 14.6 billion in 1994 to 23.4 billion in 1998. But most of the growth has been in the smaller sizes, according to the Container Recycling Institute of Arlington, Virginia. During those same years, however, recycling rates for plastic soda bottles of all sizes fell from 48 per cent to about 35 per cent. While the smaller plastic bottles are designed for a ready-to-run society, the reality is that the bottles are driving down profit margins for recyclers and often wind up in roadside ditches. Easily emptied means easily pitched.

Strange. All these people are drinking bottled water to protect their bodies and their health, and then they're throwing their bottles out of the car window. It's like they haven't completed the loop in their rationale here.

Plastic packaging is slowly becoming the norm in India too and we are happy to carry away water, juice, biscuits, chips, muruku, dal, pickles, curd, chicken and ready-to-eat dishes, in plastic containers. PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, is a certain kind of resin used in making most plastic bottles and containers. In 1995, of the 32 million tonnes of plastic resin produced in the US, nearly 40 per cent was used for packing and for producing containers, much of which ended up in landfills or was burnt. Municipal waste incineration (burning), especially with chlorinated plastics, leads to release of dioxin which is a known carcinogen and which affects the reproductive system.