The Controversy Of Banning Water Bottles

Bottles are helpful for millions of people around the world. In an article, “Study: Bottled Water No Safer Than Tap Water” it supports this topic by stating “Bottled water is a necessity in parts of the world without a safe source of potable water, Kay said, and an option for consumers in countries with adequate public water supplies.” (Baumgartner) There are so many people in this world without healthy drinking water. Bottled water can be shipped overseas to all of these people in need. Tap water can not save people in that way. Of course it is a great alternative, but bottled water is and can benefit so many other people in the world. It does not just help with people who can not receive water at any time. It also helps with natural disasters all around the

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

The main issue with bottled water is the effect it has on the environment. Plastic bottles are drastically increasing the size of landfills and can take up to five hundred years to decompose. At the rate plastic

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

(Ban the Bottle, 2014) In the previous year, the average American used approximately 167 disposable water bottles but only recycled 38. (Ban the Bottle, 2014) Statistics collected by the Health Research Funding organization illustrate that only 1 in 5 water bottles are recycled while the other four contribute to the 3 billion pounds of waste from plastic water bottles. (HRF, 2014) Depending on the size and volume, the cost of bottled water usually covers packaging, advertising, shipping and administrative processes. (HRF, 2014) If an individual purchases water bottles often, the cost accumulates and mass waste is produced but if one were to purchase a reusable bottle, hundreds of dollars can be saved in a year while also keeping the landfills and waste bins clear of plastic bottles and caps. (Ban the Bottle,

On the 29th of August, 2005, Hurricane Katrina rampaged through the United States, causing 125 billion dollars in damage, resulting in over a million houses destroyed and 80% of New Orleans flooded. Millions of people were left with undrinkable tap water, yet as a result, companies like the American Beverage Association donated more than 200,000 cases of bottled water (about 5 million water bottles) to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. However, if the United States had banned water bottles beforehand, what would have happened to those who needed it? As it is clearly know, water is such a vital necessity in plants, animals, and humans that without convenient, clean water, all life on Earth would eventually die.

From helping the daily jogger stay hydrated during a run to that mom and family trying to stay hydrated at the amusement park, bottled water has had a lot of good to it. However do those goods outweigh the bad? In “Bottled Water: Friend or Foe?” by Christopher Castillo, Diana Goettsch, Angela Reid, and Catherine Sterling argue bottled water are our worst enemy, reasons being the bottle itself has harming chemicals within it which we are drinking, bottled water damages our environment, and lastly we are spending more on bottled water when we have the same water coming from our sinks.

In Peter Gleick’s “Selling Bottled Water: The Modern Medicine Show” and Cynthia Barnett’s “Business in a Bottle”, bottled water is argued to be an excessive commodity falsely advertised as healthier and more beneficial than tap water to society and the environment. Both authors discuss that bottled water is actually equivalent in quality to tap water and in some cases even more hazardous to the human body. Public water itself is a less expensive resource that is more accessible to the masses. However, due to fraudulent companies focused on profit and the lack of effective oversight, people are deterred from realizing that there does not need to be an alternative to municipal water. Gleick

Making all the plastic for those bottles uses 17 million barrels of crude oil annually. That is the equivalent to the fuel needed to keep 1 million vehicles on the road for 12 months so why are so many people drinking bottled waters? They believe that they are making a healthy choice. But the truth is that tap water is just as safe, often safer than bottled water. In fact, some bottled water is

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.

Michael Hiltzik’s first section of the article is especially important for individuals to know about. I agree 100% with his opinion on bottle water. There are many environmental dangers and unnecessary expenses for bottled water. Countless people don’t discard of their bottled waters in the recycling or trash bin. Eventually, these plastic dangers end up in the ocean and may put marine life in jeopardy.

Bottled water should not be used as often as it is because of the greater the number of bottled water that is consumed, the greater the increase in the amount of pollution that will be in the environment. One may argue that water bottles can be recycled after use so that more can be made from it. One also may be right with this statement because recycling is known to be a useful task for the environment, however, they forget to recognize Casey’s studies that show, “there is no legal way to recycle…without adding a new layer of virgin plastic” (Casey 232). Not only does plastic pollution become a problem when bottled water is excessively consumed, but the natural resources that get used to package it can begin to run out. The more that bottled water is used, the more oil that will be needed to package and ship the bottles, therefore using up a valuable resource that could be preserved (“Bottled Water”). If bottled water would be consumed less often, there might be a chance that the government could spend less time and money on attempting to regulate bottled water and spend that resource on continuing to make our tap water

“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.

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.