The Pros And Cons Of Bottled Water Essay

Bottled water has become a controversial topic as of late. There are always two sides to every argument, some think that bottled water is beneficial to society, whereas some people think that it is detrimental to society as a whole. Bottled water is detrimental to society because it costs the country an abundance of money. It is also harmful to society because it is damaging to the environment. A lack of sanitation in bottled water has also been connected to illnesses among people who drink it. Bottled water is in no way shape or form worth the price that one will spend financially, nor is it worth the gamble of becoming sick from all the harsh chemicals that come from the bottle itself.

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.

Water is an essential part to human life. We as humans need around eight to twelve cups per day to make up for the fact that throughout normal functions such as breathing and sweating we lose an average of ten cups per day. To make sure that we are healthy and everything runs properly, we must make sure we drink the right amount of water (msnbc.com, 2004). The one question when thinking about water is what type of water will you drink? The biggest controversy is bottled water vs. tap water. Many people in the world today are switching from drinking tap water to drinking bottled water. The number of people who drink bottled water has been rising over the past few decades and by an average of 7% per year. A

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

Slosh. Clonk. Crush. A sound familiar to anyone who has given the water bottle flipping challenge a shot. Who knew tossing a water bottle up in the air would create such a craze. However, there is more to bottled water than a means to playing a fun game. Bottled water has become a vital part of today’s world. Undoubtedly, bottled water in some way has touched everyone’s life from times of disaster, to underdeveloped countries, and to the American job market, and while some feel bottled water is unsafe for the environment and question the safety of consumer ingestion, alternative eco-friendly materials are being developed, and no

There are many benefits of drinking bottled water, but these benefits do not outweigh the costs. Drinking bottled water can have many negative effects on human health, and can be very harmful to the environment. Over the past ten years, the bottled water market has tripled. Every year the market grows ten percent from the previous year. Because the market is continuously growing, the amount of negative impacts of bottled water are also growing. Bottled water has been linked to health defects, illnesses including cancer, pollution and global warming. Purchasing and drinking bottled water is not good, and there are many dangers that come with purchasing plastic bottled water.

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.

The debate on bottled water vs. tap water has been going on for many years now. Over the last thirty years, people have steadily been switching over to bottled water due to fears of their tap water being unsafe, or unhealthy to drink. Some of the major issues with tap water are the chemicals added to water at the plants and the common occurrence of public water supplies becoming contaminated. When it comes to purity, consistency, and convenience, bottled water is the safer solution.

“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.

According to Hannah Ellsbury (2013), “The energy squandered on using bottled water would be sufficient to power a hundred and ninety thousand homes”. In 1621, the idea of bottled water first originated in the United Kingdom. Therefore, global consumption of bottled water reached seventy-four and seven billion gallons in 2014. The largest consumer in the world of bottled water is U.S. comes next Mexico, China, and Brazil. Some individuals argue that drinking bottled water has many risks in different aspects. However, this paper argues that people should not only drink bottled water.

Society continues to debate whether the benefits of bottled water outweigh the cons or vice versa. Many people are in favor of bottled water because of the convenience and availability. On the other hand, several people are opposed to bottled water because of the detrimental effects on the environment. In different facilities worldwide, organizations have performed several studies in both points of view to determine whether or not the benefits of bottled water outweigh the cons or vice versa. As a result of the various studies, the benefits of bottled water do not outweigh the cons.

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.

We all drink water, and every organism that is carbon based, needs of this universal element to survive, but in the modern world of today, and within the society we live in, technology has made it possible to not solely depend on nature’s natural way of recycling water, to drink and use it again, but to also purify it ourselves, thus, meeting the demands of the people’s everyday needs for clean drinking water, but today and more than anything, there is a social controversy for the distribution of water, and in the stance of the essay, we will go in depth and reason, to bottling water. Bottling water, well, let’s start with a bit on the aggressive side, for starters, sure it uses petroleum to make its plastics, thus using natural resources, and later contributing to the enormous amounts of landfill across the world every year, but we should remind ourselves that, nothing that is worth doing is ever easy, and as a matter of fact, companies are already looking for alternative plastic research such as biodegradable plastic, and reducing the amount of plastic used per bottle. But then, we see according to Reader’s Digest, that bottling water is: “ overpriced, glorified tap water ...” , but the truth is that even though some companies admit using tap water for a source, it doesn’t apply to all companies and as a matter of fact as well,