Pros And Cons Of Plastic Water Bottles

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!

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

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

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

11). Also, for the most part, bottled water is basically packaged tap water: “Much of the bottled water for sale comes from municipal taps (40 percent in the U.S.)” (Natural Life, 2007, p. 10). Essentially, consumers are paying 2,000 times more for bottled water than the price for water that could easily be poured from the kitchen faucet. The amount of oil that is consumed for shipment and production of plastic bottles is the main reason why the price of bottled water is marked up so high. In addition to paying higher costs for bottled water, consumers’ tax dollars are responsible for paying to recycle the bottles. “More than four billion pounds of plastic water bottles go into landfills each year. This costs $70 million of taxpayers money each year in the United States alone” (Adeland, 2011, p. 230). The bottled water industry has made their products readily available and more convenient making it is easier to purchase a bottle of water than it is to pour a glass of water from a tap. This results in a high demand for the product and, therefore, costs to manufacture, ship, and purchase bottled water are extreme.

Bottled water is probably the biggest scandal since Jordan Belfort was a penny stock broker. We pay extra for something that is convenientconvnant for us, but inturn is hurting ourare planet. We try to help by recycling, but still 38 billion plastic bottles made it to the landfills in 2010 and since then the numbers have just kept rising.In 2013, 10,130.3 million gallons of bottled water were produced in the United States, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp.(page #) Depending on who you ask, that’s either proof that more Americans are turning away from sugary soft drinks, or an environmental and ethical problem.

We are in a drought, yet there is still so much water being wasted. To purify our drinking water in bottles, two gallons are being used for every one gallon!

Water bottles are a staple in today’s society. In his article, “Costly water: Bottled and Sold: The History Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water,” author Martin W. Lewis quotes Peter H. Gleick when he says that, “Consumers buy bottled water for four main reasons: safety, taste, style, and convenience,” and he’s absolutely right (Par. 9). Bottled water is cleaner, healthier, and more convenient than tap water. More people are more apt to grab a bottle of water on the go, rather than fill a reusable bottle from the sink. It’s just easy. At least, that’s what we are led to believe. Bottled water is constantly in battle with its not-so-lavish counterpart, tap water. Some will even argue that the benefits of bottled water alone outweigh the cost. They, however, do not. The fact is, water bottles have plagued society for years and have become a growing menace to our environment and our people.

“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.

Refillable water bottles may seem expensive, but in the long run it will be much cheaper. “On average, Americans spend about $5 a week on bottled water, this means you can save $260 per year by switching to a reusable water bottle” (Speer par. 5). This statistic shows just how much the average American (the world wide statistic was not available) can save yearly, let alone in a lifetime. This statistic also does not include the average money a year a person spends on soda pop, tea, coffee, or other drinks that could be put into the refillable bottle if they are bought in bulk. Many people say they do not have money to buy a nice refillable water bottle, but most people do have the money it would take to buy an eight dollar Contigo refillable bottle from Walmart that would do the job. Up to one fifth of Americans have tap water that is not drinkable (Karp par. 1). However, there are refillable water bottles with filters. Refillable water bottles with filters may be more expensive, but it is easy to find a cheap one at Walmart. For example someone could buy a ten dollar Brita filter water bottle. Investing in a refillable bottle will already save someone money after one month of use.

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.

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