It’s easy to overlook that last sip of water at the bottom of a plastic bottle. After all, it’s just water. It will evaporate or filter back into the earth, right?
You finish your bottle of water as you head out the door or after dinner. Without a second thought, you toss it into the recycling bin (hopefully). The bottle makes a hollow sound as it hits the bottom of the bin, and you move on. But that last sip of water might have a bigger impact than expected.
If the bottle ends up in a landfill, the water inside could remain trapped for decades. Modern landfills are designed to prevent contamination by blocking runoff from reaching the soil and groundwater. While this protection is essential for environmental safety, it also means that water sealed inside plastic bottles stays there. It can’t evaporate or seep into the ground.
The plastic itself also lingers. Under heat and sunlight, it slowly breaks down, releasing microplastics and chemical residues into the soil and water. This contributes to long-term pollution, compounding the problem over time.
The scale of the issue is hard to grasp. The world produces about 500 billion plastic bottles each year, yet only 12% of them are recycled. If even 5% are discarded with a tablespoon of water inside, nearly 7 million gallons of clean, drinkable water are lost annually — enough to fill ten Olympic-sized swimming pools. That’s treated water, meant for consumption, rendered unusable simply because it wasn’t emptied.
Some packaging companies are working on solutions, such as bottles designed to drain more effectively. But the simplest solution is already within reach: empty the bottle before recycling it. That small action helps return water to the natural cycle, where it can be reused rather than lost.
It may seem like a small gesture, but at scale, the impact is significant. Millions of gallons of trapped water lost in landfills each year represent not only wasted resources but also a break in the earth’s natural water cycle. Clean water is becoming increasingly scarce. Trapping it in plastic, where it serves no purpose and adds to environmental strain, is a quiet but preventable loss.
A Broader Perspective
The idea of clean water sealed inside plastic for decades is striking. It represents a larger issue of wasted resources and environmental imbalance. While water inside a plastic bottle isn’t lost forever, it remains trapped long enough to disrupt the natural cycle.
The bigger challenge isn’t the water itself but how we handle the materials surrounding it. Most plastic bottles still aren’t being recycled, often due to sorting errors or overwhelmed recycling systems. However, every gesture count. By recycling a bottle, you prevent both the plastic and the water from being trapped in a landfill, helping to keep both resources in circulation.
Everyday Impact
At Ricova, we work to preserve resources by keeping recyclable materials like plastic, paper, and metal in circulation. The image of trapped water illustrates what happens when valuable resources are lost unnecessarily. By keeping materials in the recycling stream, we help reduce waste and protect natural resources. Every recycled material helps close the loop and reduces environmental pressure.
