The Pros And Cons Of Plastic Bottles

Background and Audience Relevance: Everyone including newborn babies uses Plastic bottles. According to Petz. S (2009, October 15) Science, Clean Water “Out of the 50 billion bottles of water being bought each year, 80% end up in a landfill, even though recycling programs exist. ”. Which takes an impact to the plastic trash that travels to what is now a garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean. We are the reason for the global warning, leak of chemicals in our food and water supplies. Yes, water bottles do make it easier for us to carry around but what we don’t know if that our pocket is paying the price of pollution leading to health issues.

Only 20% of water bottles that are purchased make it to the recycle bin (Gunzelmann 1). So what happens to all the bottles that are not recycled? The bottles first photodegrade, meaning they slowly break down into smaller pieces, and then it is estimated to take between 500 to 1,000 years for the plastic to biodegrade. While the plastic is slowly breaking down, it either stays in a landfill, 38 billion plastic bottles end up in U.S. landfills each year ("Canned Water 4 Kids”); or it ends up in the ocean, According to Canned Water 4 Kids, there is a garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean that is estimated to be twice the size of Texas. No matter where the plastic breaks down, the tiny fragments absorb toxins which pollute our seas, lakes, and rivers, contaminate our soil, and poison animals.

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

The individual components of the bottled water supply chain that contribute significantly to the industry 's carbon footprint are apparent in the entire process of creating bottled water. During extraction and production oil is used to create the plastic bottles. Then energy is required to ship the bottles across the globe. Lastly, disposal of the bottles is an issue as the majority of them ends up in landfills in which they will remain for thousands of years, or they are put into incinerators which releases toxins into the air.

It makes me feel guilty when I have my bottle of water with me, even though I put it in the recycle bin at the end of the day, I now wonder about where it will end up. Does it go to another plastic product to be tossed aside, this indestructible piece of plastic? I am concerned as I watch the people of “convenience” walk by and I look at the products that we all carry to help us make our lives easier. I note the woman next to me has two of the “better water bottles”, one with a small round spring in it to help stir the liquid “meal on the go” that she has in that particular bottle. Another person walks by with a liquid breakfast in a Styrofoam cup, another non-biodegradable product. A couple of construction workers sit down across the room with their

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 movie documentary Tapped has opened not only mine, but a group of society’s eyes to what harm we are actually causing upon on ourselves with an action so little as to drinking out of plastics bottles. People have been drinking out of bottle waters assuming that what the are drinking out of is safe but once over thousands of plastic bottles were tested huge concerns grew. Studies show that varieties of bacteria and chemicals were found, causing cancer and other illnesses. One of the many harmful chemicals found in these plastic bottles is Styrene which causes a cancer causing agent and also could possibly cause adverse reproductive effects. Investigators also found three different types phthalate, Diethyl phthalate, Dioctyl phthalate that

PET requires a huge amount of fossil fuels to create, and for a single-use bottle, that is a lot of fuel to burn. Despite the huge mass of water bottles, most of them aren’t recycled because only certain types can be recycled. Most bottles usually end up in the ocean or landfills, leaving dangerous chemicals all around our environment. They are also invading our clean society, with litter in parks, streets, sidewalks, etc. Even if you chop them up into tiny pieces, they still take longer than a human lifetime to decompose.

According journalist Eric Goldschein, the United States drank 9 billion gallons of water in 2008 (Business Insider). Therefore, in order to prevent access waste and build up of plastic from the water bottles, many different varieties of reusable water bottles on the market today advertise the message of an eco-friendly product. This message, however, can be easily adulterated and twisted in the manufacturer’s favor for simply business purposes, thus promoting bottles that have only the perk of being used many times before they are eventually discarded, ultimately falsifying the term “reusable”. When compared to the message of perpetual reusability, as well as the “five steps to eco-effectiveness,” put forth in the book Cradle to Cradle

The convenience of bottled water is not worth the money, potential health risks, or the environmental impacts in the production and disposal of the plastic bottles. Bottled water usage cannot be regulated, but a lot can be done to ensure that the environment is pollution free. As consumers, we must ensure that we are conscious of the health risks involved when we drink bottled water as well as the impacts the plastic bottle has. Water is a precious resource, and there must be better decisions made to ensure it is not being wasted. Individual should save their money, reduce consumption of bottled water. and invest in reusable water

The water bottle industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the United States. This being said, our landfills are filled with more than eighty five percent of plastic bottles. Their long lifetime and thoughtless consumers are not only filing our dumps with these plastic bottles, but hurting our oceans too. Since water bottles do not biodegrade, they can float aimlessly on the ocean surface for years. They also may cause a passing predator to be fooled into thinking it is a resting prey. Little did that predator know, they were going to have a serious stomach ache trying to digest a plastic bottle. It also pollutes the soil and waterways as well. Besides the space water bottles physically fill, their production waste is just as dire. In America alone, we use about seventeen

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

The New York Times’ article uses a plethora of logos, especially in statistics. Logos is logic used to persuade the reader. It is apart of the Aristotelian model. An example from the