Environmental Impact of Personal Lifestyle: Behavior # 1
My first lifestyle behavior that has an impact on the environment is the overuse of bottled water and plastic bags. In our modern society using plastic bags and bottled water became a necessity in our everyday life which is completely unnecessary. I, personally depend on stuff made of plastic for my basic needs. I usually every time doing some shopping every time using new plastic bags. Sometimes these bags gathered in my house that I just throw them into the trash. I use plastic zippers to store food and other things. No doubt it is very convenient to cover the table with a plastic cover sheet before dinner and just take and throw away without a second thought. It is cheap and convenient, I don’t have to spend a couple of minutes to clean it and reuse next time. Unfortunately, the higher prices for our lazy life is paying our environment with global warming.
Bottled water consumption has attached to the issue of the overutilization of plastic to which I was just addicted to. While I was drinking my 8 glasses water per day, I was wasting 8 plastic bottles. During my cooking process where I used water from bottles assuming it is healthier than the tap water, I was wasting minimum 5 bottles per meal. I used to cook every day and sometimes twice a day. In this case, there are two issues in one that I was causing to the environment first quantity of the plastic waste and the use of low-quality water by paying lots of
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!
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.
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
Environmental scanning can be viewed as a way of acquiring information about outside events that can aid organizations in first identifying potential trends, then interpreting them
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
Besides being costly to the environment and to users, consuming bottled water does not come without health concerns. The plastic in bottled water, PET, breaks down and releases toxic chemicals into the water. “A study of 132 brands of bottled
According to the article Bottled Water vs. Tap Water by Jackie Dana, “It’s estimated that people spend $100 billion a year on bottled water, each American drinks 21 gallons per year, almost 2 gallons per month!” We see them everywhere but it is where we see them that is damaging to the environment, for instance, our streets, oceans, and not properly thrown out. These plastic bottles have become unneeded waste starting a global problem. There are better alternatives for carrying our everyday water that is less expensive and less harmful. For example, stainless steel, canteens, and other nonplastic containers.
“Over 2.7 million tons of plastic are used in the manufacturing of bottled water each year, most of which is derived from crude oil” (Sexton and Morley). People waste so much money on making bottled water when they just throw them away when there finished. Most people would agree that bottled water is destroying the environment. Although some people think bottled water is useful and convenient; nevertheless, bottled water is bad and harmful for the earth, because the bottles are polluting oceans and causing people to become ill.
“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.
In the United States, it is estimated that humans consumed an average of 400 billion gallons of water every day, while some countries can barely survive with the water they currently have. It is also estimated that over 780 million people don't have access to clean safe water and have to rely on other sources to survive. The main source for clean water is consuming plastic water bottles. While there are many pros to purchasing and consuming bottled water there many cons and possible risks. While over 50 billion plastic water bottles are produced each year, but only about 23 percent in the United States is recycled. That is roughly about 38 billion water bottles; more than $1 billion worth of plastic are wasted each year.
The production of bottled water is not only adding a massive waste of plastic to our landfills, it’s also wasting a mass of oil and energy. According to scientists, Gleick and Cooley, “just producing the plastic bottles for bottled-water consumption worldwide uses 50 million barrels of oil annually—enough to supply total U.S. oil demand for 2.5 days.” This waste of oil is put into not just the process, but the bottles as well. Because of this the oil leaks into our earth while it sits, wasting away in
to be grown trees have to be cut down and I have explained the effects
Today water bottles are sold all over the world, and about 1,000 bottles are consumed every second. In fact, it has been reported that 200 billion water bottles are sold globally gathering 60 billion dollars. Additionally, bottled water was created for being portable, because of poor tap water quality, safety and health concerns, and as a substitute for sugary drinks. In contrast, bottled water shouldn’t be around anymore because they have become a health and environmental issue. In contrast, water bottles have been proven to be hazardous to human health due to the large number of chemicals found in them. Most of the bottles cannot be recycled, which means they stay in the landfill releasing chemicals into the soil and air, and parts of the bottles find their way into the ocean harming the marine life.
Today plastic water bottles are putting a strain on the environment and highlighting their wasteful properties. A study by Brita, a water filtration company, shows that “Americans discard 38 billion plastic water bottles a year, and it takes 1.5 billion barrels of oil to produce them” (York 2). The amount of oil that is being used to produce the plastic of bottled water can be used elsewhere like gasoline for cars and electricity for homes. Even though the plastic from bottled water is recyclable, The Container Recycling Institute (CR1) states that “eight out of 10 water bottles end up in landfills” and end up being washed into streams and oceans (Knopper 36). CR1 also states that “only 14 percent of plastic water bottles purchased annually in the U.S. are recycled” (Burbank 23). This study produced by CR1 proves that people still are not recycling their bottled
Environmental problems are something which belongs to nature or known as “Mother Earth” [13]. Nature was created to help people survive from gathering foods until build a house. This phenomenon happens continuously without thinking how much damage that nature has because human’s fault. Nature gradually becomes worse and animal’s life in danger. People who are aware of the importance of nature react. Those people do several ways to save the environment. Although these efforts can return back the environment, these efforts only can be hold temporarily. This problem happens because those people who are aware of the environment only slightly; for remaining, there are people either do not know or do not care about the nature. People’s efforts