Green Guilt Summary

d. Demographics (what is the industry’s focus customer) Another significant trend is product marketing and packaging. Realizing that consumers cite taste, quality, and purity as the top reasons for drinking bottled water, bottlers market and design bottles to display their purity. Other manufacturers seek to carve out a new level in the bottled water industry introducing high-end products. Another packaging trend in the bottled water industry is multi-packs. As current bottled water consumption grows, more consumers are turning to multi-packs to save time and money.

Seventy percent of the human body is comprised of water. This makes drinking water quality vital. The EPA estimates the average adult consumes 1.2 liters daily or 115 gallons of community (tap) water daily while the average consumption of bottled water per capita in the U.S. is in excess of 30.8 gallons per year and is expected to continue to increase according to the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) and the Beverage Marketing Association’s 2013 report. Bottled water costs anywhere from 240 to 10,000 times more per gallon than the average cost of tap, but people’s perception that bottled water is purer, safer or healthier is driven, in part, by strong bottled water marketing campaigns that focus on news reports about crises that involve municipal water supplies. (NRDC, “Bottled Water Pure Drink or Pure Hype”) The sources for both tap and bottled waters as well as additives to either enrich or neutralize contents of water determine the mineral and chemical composition of drinking water. Is bottled water really any purer or healthier than local tap water?

In fact 22% of test water bottle brands had chemical contaminants higher than the state limit (ABC, 1). So why do Americans think bottled water is so great? Maybe it’s because of how much companies advertise the product, advertising expenses for bottled water totaled $61 million in 2012 ("International Bottled Water Association" 1). Whatever the reason may be, bottled water is the second most popular beverage in the U.S.A., and more and more bottles of water are being produced and distributed this very second.

Another way bottled water is the way to go is because it helps aid in healthy choices. In the article, “Grab the Bottle”, it states that “bottled water has helped consumers choose to drink more water because it presents it in a convenient way (Giroux). In many cases, consumers buy more objects that appeal to the eyes. Bottled water comes in different sizes and shapes. What is trending in society, the public wants automatically. In the article, “Comment-Soft Drinks and Water- The Future of Bottled Water”, he told that “attractive packages alone can make us feel that what we are drinking is beneficial” (Rowlands). Trendy shapes, sizes, and colors are what the public is drawn to. If a consumer sees a unique water bottle in the store, he or she will buy that because it’s trendy and popular in society.

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 people do not live ecofriendly lives or find protecting the environment to be important.

Water is essential to life, scientific fact, not debatable (Tracy). More than half of all Americans drink bottled water; about a third of the public consumes it regularly (Olsen). Many drink or buy bottled water simply because they believe it is of better quality, cleaner, and better tasting. On the contrary, several individuals do not know the cons of drinking bottled water. Today, there are many misconceptions and myths about bottled water. Many people are uneducated about what goes into our bottles and how it not only affects us but also our environment. In the article “The New Oil” by Jeneen Interlandi and Ryan Tracy they discuss the issues that have to do with water and the privatization of it. They believe there is a crisis and something has to be done. Due to the cost, pollution, shortage, and health issues, bottled water should be outlawed. Water should not be controlled by water bottle companies and should not be allowed to be sold in plastic bottles.

In terms of bottled water there are a lot of substitutes and it can be difficult to capture a targeted market and retain them as consumers have many similar products to choose from.

Why is the American not ready to live sustainably like India and China? Brodwin (2015, March, 23), in his article “Unsustainable America”, discusses that consumers are very important to improve the environmental sustainability. In addition, consumers are able to affect sustainability. There are two countries support to improve the environmental sustainability such as India and China. In the other hand, America don’t show their willingness to improve the environmental sustainability. The author uses strong source and example to convince his readers. Also, he is egocentric because he focuses in America’s benefit. Furthermore, he uses a good example to convince reader, and that will be explained below.

“The True American” by Stanford professor Robert Pogue Harrison makes a very true statement about the paradoxes in America. People may believe one thing about how we really try to keep our environment clean and pick up after yourself while others may believe we do not care that much for our environment. They both contradict each other but really they both are correct and that is what Harrison explained in his book.

As a nation we all participate in daily consumption of food, clothing, shelter and some sort of transportation. to survive. We are destroying our environment with waist. On average Americans disposed over 200,000 tons of edible food daily. Pollute our air and water, destroy our forest, just so we can drive the newest car or have the latest crafted oak furniture We use top soil to build malls, so people can consume even more. In "The shadows of Consumption, Peter Dauvergne explain the coast of consumption by globalized corporations, trade, and finance." (Dauvergne, Peter. The Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. ).

Another health-related scam that affects most of us is bottled water. According to Food & Water Watch, about half of it is filtered tap water with fancy names, as evidenced in one case by an actual "tap water" label on a company's product. Yet with the demise of community water fountains, and the barrage of advertising for "safe and pure" drinking water, unsuspecting Americans pay dearly: for the price we pay for a bottle of water we would be able to fill up that bottle a thousand times with tap water.

We believe that the people of America should be more concerned about the negative impacts in the changes of Earth’s Environment/Human Activity. The positive impacts mostly just benefit us as a society (money, economy, etc.). The negative impacts actually, not only hurt us, but our entire Earth as well. Including other living organisms. While it may not seem like it, what we’re doing now is actually going to hurt us in the future. There’s no point in doing something now to help us currently when later it is going to come back and put us in BIG trouble.

Have you ever had any concerns about bottled water? Do you think that bottled water consumption should be banned? Bottled water is water packed in plastic containers and sold for human consumption (Health Canada, 2013). Currently, the amount of bottled water consumed has increased considerably since many people feel it is safer drinking bottled water than tap water (Parent and Wrong, 2014). According to The Statistics Portal, the global sale of bottled water took a leap from 161, 589 to 181, 608 liters from 2009 to 2011. Only in the United States, each American citizen consumed around 32 gallons of bottled water in 2013, thus meaning an equivalent growth of 15, 94% over 2009 (The Statistics Portal, 2014). In fact, due to good portability, bottled water has been helpful in both simple and complex situations such as daily exercises and natural disasters. Even though having those few considerable advantages, bottled water still have been less beneficial; especially due to the negative impacts in the socio-economic, health and environmental fields.

Americans spend an excessive amount of money on bottled water. Why? Some, cannot even tell the difference between tap and bottled. A lot of bottled water companies claim