The PET bottle is ready to be filled, sealed and distributed to you. It's in your grasp. You take a sip. If you finish a litre of bottled water, you're likely swallowing around 240,000 plastic fragments.

After use, a PET bottle can end up thrown away, openly burned or managed through waste disposal.

If plastic is thrown away, it pollutes landscapes, waterways and ecosystems, affecting aquatic and terrestrial animals that often mistake it for food, introducing plastics into the food chain. When incinerated, it releases harmful pollutants, including methane, which can have a more significant impact on climate change than CO₂ over shorter periods. And even when handled in the most sustainable way possible, only about 9 percent of all plastic waste is estimated to be recycled. Specifically, just 13 percent of bottles, which are the most commonly recycled single-use plastic, are made from recycled PET material.