Question

More than 60 million plastic water bottles end up in landfills and incinerators everyday. Each bottle is about 8 inches tall. If you lined up all 60 million bottles, how manymiles long would they stretch end to end? (5280 ft = 1 mile; 12 in = 1 ft]

Answer 1

The amount of plastic water bottles that is wasted to either landfills and/or incinerators is given as follows:

$n\text{ = 60,000,000 bottles}$

Each bottle has a height ( on average ) of:

$h\text{ = 8 in}$

If we were to line up all the bottles ( n ) along their height ( h ) in a straight line. We will have the following length of the string of bottles in ( inches ):

$\begin{gathered} \text{Total length = n}\cdot h \\ \text{Total length = 60,000,000 }\cdot\text{ 8 in} \\ \text{\textcolor{#FF7968}{Total length = }}\textcolor{#FF7968}{480,000,000}\text{\textcolor{#FF7968}{ in}} \end{gathered}$

To convert the length of all the bottles lined up from inches to feet we will use the following scale:

$\begin{gathered} 1\text{ ft = 12 in , then:} \\ x\text{ ft = 480,000,000 in} \\ ============= \\ x\text{ = }\frac{480,000,000}{12} \\ \textcolor{#FF7968}{x}\text{\textcolor{#FF7968}{ = 40,000,000 ft}} \end{gathered}$

To convert the length of all the bottles lined up from feet to miles we will use the following scale:

$\begin{gathered} 1\text{ mile = 5280 ft} \\ x\text{ miles = 40,000,000} \\ ============= \\ x\text{ = }\frac{40,000,000}{5280} \\ \textcolor{#FF7968}{x}\text{\textcolor{#FF7968}{ = 7,575.758 miles}} \end{gathered}$

Hence, the total length of ( 60,000,000 ) bottles lined up together would result in:

$\textcolor{#FF7968}{7,575.758}\text{\textcolor{#FF7968}{ miles}}$