The Problem Of Bottled Water

“The Story of Bottled Water” by Annie Leonard’s central purpose is about how bottled water is less environmentally-friendly, less tasty, and less safe, but more expensive. The author wants action to be taken to ban water bottles and increase the access of safe tap water to all.

My grandmother wakes me around four in the morning to find out if I have bottled water in my possession. I rise from my cot, untangling my pretzel like limbs as I sit up to look at her in the darkness. The cot is hardly a foot off the ground, my ankles hang off the edge, and I have no place to put my upper limbs. “Wake up, I need to change the water.” I need to protect the frog. She is staring at me in the darkness expectantly, wonderingly. A whimsical child trapped in the body of a fountain of wisdom.

Few issues have recently gotten as much attention as the energy extraction activities involving a controversial procedure called "fracking." As reports of drinking water becoming tainted with fracking fluid flood the news, both oil and gas companies as well as environmental groups are presenting competing "facts" about the effects of drilling on ground water.

Hydraulic fracking is putting a pressurized mixture of water, sand, and chemicals deep into the Earth to release oil and other gas. Not only does hydraulic fracking use enough water annually to supply five million people a year, but it some environmentalist believe it may contaminate the water (Dechert, 2015). In 2016, The State Senate committee in Florida turned down a bill to regulate hydraulic fracking even though nearly eight counties and cities either ban or opposes this new technique (Alvarez, 2016). Haliburton Co. is regulating themselves by setting a goal to use twenty-five percent less water for hydraulic fracking by the end of 2014. Some also believe that hydraulic fracking is not harming the water supply and is actually decreasing the amount of water used to sustain an oil driven society (Fracking Does Not, 2015). According to the Environmental Protection Agency in 2015, there are no “widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States” (Fractured Thinking, 2016). No matter the case, city officials and corporations are going to have to work together to reduce the amount of contaminated water in this

Water is one of our important resources that were given to us by mother nature. We see water as a source for survival and many more advantages. It's fragile, and the smallest amount of contaminants could ruin it for a population, yet one of the major ingredients in fracking processes is the water. Reports of accidents involving water contamination are everywhere. The basic process of

Fracking is the process where pressurized water is injected into shale beds, or layers of sedimentary rock, which opens the rock to release oil and natural gas. Fracking is dangerous for many reasons, but one of the strongest affects it has is on our drinking water. Anywhere from 2 to 8 million gallons of water are used to frack only one well. Shockingly, just 10 percent of the water used returns to the surface. However, water isn’t the only thing being put in the ground- a “toxic stew” of chemicals and sand are also added. Over 40,000 gallons of chemicals are used every time we frack. The chemicals in the fracking mixture can make its way to our groundwater, harming the

Hydraulic fracturing, or also known as fracking, is a technique that is used to recover oil and gases directing coming from rocks that we have lost. The process, which tends to be successful in recovering these resources, can be controversial against many citizens. Since fracking consists of water, sand, and other chemicals being injected into the deep rocks underground, the high pressure of drilling down into the earth with this mixture allows the gas to flow out. This technique is rather effective and useful for the industry; its results making it possible for businesses to use the sources we’ve wasted and used. However, what gets many people riling against the procedure is that fracking can also result in water contamination. Recognizing that water contamination is already a national issue that all governments have a desire to resolve, the population is skeptical towards why industries are allowing such method of regaining oils and gases to pollute their water.With the help of the several sources, it was made easier to come to a conclusion in agreeing or disagreeing if fracking should be used to release oil and gas or not.

The nation is shifting towards electricity generated by natural gas- over the past ten years 81 percent of new electricity capacity has been gas fired- and state governments are playing regulatory catch-up with the drilling technology’s rapid expansion to meet this burgeoning demand”. (http://www.gracelinks.org/191/natural-gas-fracking-introduction) However; to meet this demand, gas and oil companies have ignored some rather important harmful effects of hydraulic fracturing. These harmful effects include; water droughts, increased pollution, the spread of toxins, and possible negative influence on local economies. Water droughts because of the fracking process are caused by using up to approximately one-hundred times more water than previous drilling methods. This means that gradually less and less of the world where drilling is active or was active will have the ability to attain non chemical induced water. The article, “List of Pros and Cons of Fracking” published by Occupy Theory states that, “Anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of fracking waste water flows back to the original drilling surface” (http://occupytheory.org/list-of-pros-and-cons-of-fracking/) Hydraulic fracturing causes pollution in several different aspects. Oil and gas companies are not required to provide a list of chemicals used in the process which causes those in the areas where drilling is present to not be able to adapt correctly to these toxins. According to research, a few of the chemicals that have been found present in fracking include; benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene. These three chemicals are known to the scientific community to cause harmful effects on the health of people. Also, the article, “Pros and Cons of Fracking: 5 Key Issues” explains that because of the dropping gas prices, drilling use will

The industry’s use of fresh water conflicts with the principles of conservation and sustainable resources (Fracking). “100 billion gallons of water will be diverted from aquifers and fresh water sources and converted through fracking into toxic wastes that cannot be safely returned to the natural water cycle” (Fracking). A long-term plan has not been put into place to solve the problem of millions of gallons of contaminated water from fracked wells (Fracking). Treatment plants in Pennsylvania, overwhelmed by wastewater they could not fully treat, released water infected with radioactive waste into rivers that provided drinking water to 7 million people (Fracking). Drinking water intake plants in Pennsylvania are only required to test for radioactivity once every six to nine years (Fracking). Fracking can cause water to become

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

In the United States, hydraulic fracturing, dubbed “Fracking”, has become more and more popular in recent years. The goal of fracking is drilling into the ground and extracting the oil and natural gas that lays beneath the earth. However, this has drawn a lot of controversy due to its negative impacts on the environment. One of the main concerns is during drilling, waste water that is produced can potentially go into nearby sources of drinking water. It has also been observed that earthquakes have happened near areas where fracking occurs. The opposition argues that the process does not lead to contamination because the drilling happens well below freshwater sources while the

According to the article “cision” “Nestle Waters North America Donates more than 1 million bottles of water to hurricane Harvey Relief.” That was only a portion of how much bottled water was donated to hurricane harvey survivors and bottled water isn’t just for natural disaster survivors. So the next time you think of getting rid of bottled water think of all the people whose lives you could save. Don’t ban bottled water.

Swarm, Frack F. "Fracking and Water Pollution." - SourceWatch. Fracking and Water Pollution, 26 Aug. 2015. Web. 31 Aug. 2015.With the public worried about a lot of water being used in fracking, oil and gas drilling. Some of the companies have begun to reusing and recycling the usedwater. The natural-gas company uses many different ways of recycle drilling wastewater. Some of the drillers have used recycling equipment at the well site or has been shipped to a water recycling facility. When the water is received the used water is then filtered, evaporated, and then distilled. It will then be used again at the well. Other companies may add some fresh water to the used water, to dilute the salts and other contaminants,

“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.