Message in a bottle: Send an SOS to the world

THE idea that a message in a bottle floating halfway across the ocean would be found by the very person it was intended for, is about as likely as Qantas paying tax, but it’s long been a poetic symbol of hope that someone just might get that message and send help... if you were living in the 1830s.

Today, however, finding a bottle in the ocean is... well... like finding waves. There are so many. We have the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a whole island of plastic including bottles sending one silent and invisible message: when will this stop?

Given there’s also now 1 million plastic bottles produced every minute...

In the time it takes you to read this column another three or four million plastic bottles will be on their way to market, so you and the rest of us are playing part in the Last Act of The Throwaway Debacle; we can down 600 mils of water or coke or yoghurt-flavoured Pepsi in less time than it takes to make another million plastic bottles.

In 2016, 480 billion – yes, billion – plastic drinking bottles were sold across the world. “Placed end to end they would extend more than halfway to the sun,” according to one global packaging trends report. That’s around 75 million kilometres. Elon could pave the space highway to Mars (at 55 million kilometres distant) with plastic bottles, and half way back again.

When Sting wrote “Message in a Bottle” he became a prophet of sort.

Sing it:

Walked out this morning

Don’t believe what I saw

A hundred billion bottles Washed up on the shore

Seems I’m not alone at being alone A hundred billion castaways Looking for a home

And aren’t we?

The thing is if you, me, your neighbour, your parents, your friends, your school, your sports club, your supermarket, stopped supplying or using plastic bottles – demand there be no demand – so much pollution would cease.

Where do we honestly think this will end?

That someone else will read the message and send help.

One quarter of a bottle of oil is used to produce each plastic bottle. A million plastic bottles is a lot of oil so we should not be surprised that Royal Dutch Shell, for example, enjoyed profits which jumped 140 per cent last year.

Then there’s the astonishing fact it takes three times the amount of water to produce a bottle than to fill it.

Transporting the bottles to market is measured at using a litre of fuel per bottle... and no surprises then BP announces a cool couple of billion profit in their fourth quarter.

Oil and water apparently do mix after all.

That’s excellent for shareholders who, lucky for them, can buy Teslas and drive to the moon.

Yes, plastic bottles are recyclable, but it’s generally recognised that efforts to recycle them can no longer keep up. The answer is to reduce.