Considering learning about the world’s complications is quite strenuous, it is only realistic that thirst for environmental action arise. When taking a break and getting a bottle of water, another call to action is found in the style of carbon dioxide discharge reduction via water bottles. Not partaking in the sales of plastic water bottles and instead investing in a reusable bottle can dramatically decrease the carbon emissions of plastic bottle manufacturers. A special kind of plastic called polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is melted down to manufacture water bottles, and the process of making the material itself involves producing around 3 tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of PET made. Annually, this creates more than 2.6 billion tons of CO2 emissions just from the bottled water industry (“Bottled water and energy factsheet,” 2007). Along with the PET engineering emissions, the oil burned to produce water bottles releases even more C02. It takes around 3.4 megajoules of energy to make a typical one-liter (33 ounce) plastic bottle, cap, and packaging. Making enough PET to bottle America’s yearly quota of water requires more than 106 billion megajoules of energy. Because a barrel of oil contains around 6,000 megajoules, the Pacific Institute figures more than 17 million barrels of oil were needed to produce the nation’s water bottles (“Bottled water and energy factsheet,” 2007). Because a barrel of oil, when burned, releases almost 700 lbs. of C02, the environmental
Have you ever considered what is happening to all the plastic bottles you use? According to "Bottled Water: The Wrong Choice paragraph 2" it states, that when plastic bottles are made we are using more fossil fuels. By doing this we are damaging environment!
Background and Audience Relevance: Everyone including newborn babies uses Plastic bottles. According to Petz. S (2009, October 15) Science, Clean Water “Out of the 50 billion bottles of water being bought each year, 80% end up in a landfill, even though recycling programs exist. ”. Which takes an impact to the plastic trash that travels to what is now a garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean. We are the reason for the global warning, leak of chemicals in our food and water supplies. Yes, water bottles do make it easier for us to carry around but what we don’t know if that our pocket is paying the price of pollution leading to health issues.
Plastic water bottles are considered one of the healthiest beverages you can find in any shop. But are they really all that healthy for the environment, or is there a fine line between a plastic bottled water drink and what’s best for everyone? Let’s take a look at bottled water from the very start to find out. To manufacture plastic bottles, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is used, and to produce PET, crude oil and natural gas is required. If one fills a plastic water bottle 1/4th full with oil, they will be looking at how much oil was used to make that one bottle, so how much oil does it take to make all of America’s water bottles? According to the Pacific Institute, in 2006, making plastic water bottles
One of the biggest harms to the world is pollution caused by people. Most of the plastic materials used by people are left to pollute. Bottled water is one of the biggest plastic materials produced. Some people say that bottled water is safer, convenient, and provide jobs to workers in many ways. The reasons for buying bottled water differ. Some people buy bottled water because they don’t like the taste or smell of tap water, while others on the other hand buy it because of health concerns with water contamination. Pollution is one of the biggest problems hurting the environment today, and water bottles that are thrown out after each one-time use, contribute greatly to its increasing buildup. Bottled water is not only expensive to us, but also to the environment. Bottled water is hurting the economy, harming human lives, and damaging the environment.
There are many impacts that bottled water has on the environment. The choice of packaging determines many impacts. The bottles, which are either plastic, aluminum, or glass, that are not recycled are thrown into landfills and buried. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86% of plastic water bottles in the United States become garbage. If water bottlers would have used 10% recycled materials in their plastic bottles in 2004, they would have saved the equivalent of 72 million gallons of gasoline. If they used 25%, they would have saved enough energy to power more than 680,000 homes for a year (Jemmott, 2008). Incinerating used bottles produces toxins such as chlorine gas and ash. Water bottles that get buried can take up to thousands of years to biodegrade. The most common type of plastic is polyethylene
Health is dynamic and determined by the determinants of health that have factors that can both benefit and hinder our overall health (Liamputtong, Fanany, & Verrinder, 2012, p. 9). The primary health care (PHC) principles accessibility, inter-sectorial collaboration, appropriate technology, emphasis on health promotion and public participation helps all individuals at different social standings based on income levels and geographical location determined by the social determinants of health to access PHC and make an equitable health care system (McMurray & Clendon, 2011, pp. 36-44; Liamputtong, Fanany, & Verrinder, 2012, pp. 13-14).
Many of people have not realized that the creation of bottled water affects our environment. The production of water bottles requires a large amount of water plus the water that is needed to fill the bottle. Considering there is a shortage of water in several places, water should be better handled and not wasted on plastic bottle making. Of the eighty million single serve bottles of water consumed daily, thirty million ends up in landfills (Soechtig, 2009 qtd. in “Bottled Water: The Risks to Our Health, Our
The individual components of the bottled water supply chain that contribute significantly to the industry 's carbon footprint are apparent in the entire process of creating bottled water. During extraction and production oil is used to create the plastic bottles. Then energy is required to ship the bottles across the globe. Lastly, disposal of the bottles is an issue as the majority of them ends up in landfills in which they will remain for thousands of years, or they are put into incinerators which releases toxins into the air.
You can’t walk across a college campus, past an office building, or through a park without seeing one, two, or ten empty bottles. Many are plastic water bottles. Trash bins overflow them. Those water bottles are a problem. Why? Because only one out of five bottles actually makes it to a recycling bin. Plastic bottles take centuries to decompose and if they are incinerated, toxic byproducts, such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals, are releasing into the atmosphere. The rest are littered on our streets or over filing our landfills. They degrade our landscape and damage our environment. In addition the plastic water bottles are not biodegradable that is, they don’t decay. They remain as trash a hundreds of years.
In 2004, Americans, on average, drank 24 gallons of bottled water, making it second only to carbonated soft drinks in popularity (Standage). In the article “Plastic Water Bottles Causing Flood or Harm to the Environment,” the Earth Policy Institute factors the energy used to pump, process, transport, and refrigerate bottled water as over 50 million barrels of oil every year (Schriever). It’s absurd that so many resources are used to make plastic bottles which are not necessary at all. Bottled water does allow us to drink water out of it but in reality bottled water is very bad for
According to The Water Project, “Bottles used to package water take over 1,000 years to bio-degrade and if incinerated, they produce toxic fumes. It is estimated that over 80% of all single-use water bottles used in the U.S. simply become ‘litter’” (“Bottled Water is Wasteful”). This fact is not the only reason I believe that bottled water does not outweigh its costs. Although statistics show that bottled water is efficient, there are many reasons to believe otherwise.
PET requires a huge amount of fossil fuels to create, and for a single-use bottle, that is a lot of fuel to burn. Despite the huge mass of water bottles, most of them aren’t recycled because only certain types can be recycled. Most bottles usually end up in the ocean or landfills, leaving dangerous chemicals all around our environment. They are also invading our clean society, with litter in parks, streets, sidewalks, etc. Even if you chop them up into tiny pieces, they still take longer than a human lifetime to decompose.
Metaphysical and Ethical Conflicts within “All the Troubles of the Word” and Minority Report The idea of a utopian society in which everyone is immune to danger is not realistic – yet many writers or directors feel the need to express their perspective on the topic. This is an engaging topic, because everyone has different views on what a future utopia would be like, or if our society could even progress to the point to achieve a utopia. Though the novel “All the Troubles of the World” written by Isaac Asimov and the film Minority Report directed by Steven Spielberg explore a similar premise yet they have different ideas and elements. Within both Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report and Isaac Asimov’s “All the Troubles of the World” society
“One of the biggest challenges facing the bottled water industry is how to respond to the environmental claims levelled against it” (Grocer). Every time someone throws a bottle away, they have taken up more space in a landfill for the next four hundred fifty to one thousand years. Besides the long decomposition rate, water bottles are the cause of several more environmental issues. Overfilling landfills, health hazards caused by refilling, and the economic stresses due to the constant and inconvenient repurchasing are just a few of the negatives water bottles have on us. These plastic pollutants are doing more harm to both the environment and their users than good.
Plastic water bottles are seen and consumed everywhere. Without knowing the deadly effects that water bottles have on the environment, consumers will keep buying them and contribute to the problem. About 17 million barrels of oil are used each year solely to make water bottles