http://www.care2.com/greenliving/enough-with-the-plastic-water-bottles-already.html
Enough With the Plastic Water Bottles Already
Before I start in on how bad plastic water bottles are let me throw something out there. The folks that this article is intended for are those who already have access to clean drinking water. While single use plastic bottles make no sense, the bottom line is, if you do not have access to adequate drinking water, then you’ve got larger issues at stake and you need to do what is necessary to maintain your health.
Now that that’s taken care of, let’s talk about how ridiculous plastic water bottles are for the rest of us. I must say that I am privileged to have not been brought up on plastic water bottles and as such, have never had to wean myself off of them. Having said that, I’ve never seen their appeal in the first place.
Assuming you have clean water coming into your house like most of the United States does, let’s put this in perspective. Imagine if you will a world where there was a magical system bringing soda, juice and beer directly into your house, each costing you only pennies a gallon. You could turn it on any time you wanted and get clean clear wonderful beverages, and it was like this in every household you knew.
Now imagine that one day, companies started bottling and selling these very same beverages to you for 1,000 times the amount, and that you had to go to the store to buy them and lug them home in cases. Can you see it? Can you see your Uncle Morris heading out to the store for a cold six-pack rather than filling up his mug out of the kitchen wall, and paying 1,000 times as much for it to boot?
Of course not, it’s a ridiculous scenario. Yet for some reason, John Q Public has been convinced that this is the only way to drink water, and furthermore has decided that the water coming into his house is no longer drinkable. The entire thing is a huge waste of money, a huge waste of energy, a huge waste of resources, a huge waste of water and is one of the greatest marketing shams of our time.
So just how bad is bottled water? Let’s look at some statistics.
• This year more than 25 billion single use plastic water bottles will be sold in the United States alone and more than 80 percent of those will end up being disposed of rather than being recycled (that’s 20 billion bottles to the landfill Virginia!).
• Over 1.5 million barrels of oil were used to make the plastic bottles consumed in the US last year–and that doesn’t include the petroleum used to transport them.To put that in perspective, that’s enough petroleum to power 100,000 automobiles for a year!
• Drinking out of bottled water actually wastes water, using up to five times as much, and in a world where many people don’t have adequate drinking water, that’s just wrong.
• Bottled water sold across state lines is not necessarily regulated while tap water is strictly regulated so you have no idea what you are drinking when you pop open a cold one.
• Certain plastics have been shown to leach Biphesenol A, a hormone disruptor. While this is not a problem in all bottled water, who’s to say what scientists will find leaching from plastics down the road.
• While some bottles do end up getting recycled, in reality they are downcycled, being turned into other products leaving most new water bottles to require virgin plastic.
• There is a belief that every adult should drink 8 bottles of water a day, a myth most likely created by water retailers. There is no scientific evidence to prove this and while it is important to stay hydrated, this is akin to saying every adult should eat 8.2 pounds of food a day.
Moving on, let’s tackle two of the biggest reasons I hear from people who use plastic water bottles.
“Plastic water bottles are convenient because they are easy to grab and you can find them anywhere.”
Well, you can’t find them in my house, or a large number of other places where there is drinkable water coming out of the tap. In fact, I’d bet that there are more places with sinks and fountains out there than there are water kiosks, unless of course you’re in Vegas, but that’s another story. Besides, if you are talking about how convenient they are, you need to calculate in the amount of energy it takes to lug them through the store, lug them home, and then the aggravation of stubbing your toe on them late at night as you are trying to get to the kitchen. Compared to turning on the tap, bottled water is much more of a hassle.
“It’s so cheap.”
Not so Mrs. Brown! Let’s say you drink 2 bottles a day 300 days a year. At $1 a bottle that’s $600. Now I can get the same amount of water out of my tap at home for about $3. Add on a filter and that goes up to around $5. But let’s say you can get the bottles for a penny – I’ve still got you beat by $3 (and you can’t find them for a penny). Make sense? Wait, I’m not done yet. I haven’t factored in the amount of money you are paying in taxes for your local landfill and recycling center, the fuel you used to get it to your house, or the hospital bill for fixing that toe.
The end of the story is that as long as you have drinkable water coming into your house, bottled water makes absolutely no sense. If you are drinking it you are not only adding to the destruction of the planet by partaking in something completely unnecessary, but you are filling the coffers of corporations who have convinced you that you need to buy something you already get for practically nothing.
So how ‘bout it? Ready to give up on bottled water?
Dave Chameides is an environmental educator and freelance filmmaker. He writes alternative fuel articles for Edmunds.com and maintains the blogs 365 Days of Trash and Achieving Sustainability. While he is presently saving all of his trash for a year to better understand his environmental impact, his main focus is sustainability through education and believes that with knowledge all things are possible.
More from Dave Chameides (75 articles available)
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add your comment »Love to drink from glass...just feels way better, cleaner, purer!! Clean water from home is ideal...invest in a good water filter and even better, an Alkalizing Ionizing Machine for amazing quality water at home. I have designed really cool water blue glass water bottles with positive words sandblasted on them. Check them out at www.symblueology.com Your body will thank you for taking great care...our bodies are 70% water, so be sure to pay attention to what kind of water you put in!!
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I looked at the bottles on livinglavidaverde, but I found an even better one on www.betrulyyou.com . It fits right in the cup holder in my car, and says allow peace in big letters on the side. Lots of people at the office have commented on it, and a few have ordered their own! What ever glass bottle you use, you will love the feeling of a cold bottle of water straight from the fridge. Remember, those plastic bottles some people re-use are petroleum products. It takes oil to make and ship them all over the world, most often just for a single use. Switch to glass!!!
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I have said it around here before, but plastic is bad for the environment and our bodies (from Bisphenol A leach, etc). Bottled water has less regulations and could cost you an exorbitant of money over even just a year. Switch to glass. If you want to check out a great reusable glass water bottle, go to http://livinglavidaverde.net/store.aspx . Whatever you do stop drinking single use plastic water bottles!!
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I have said it around here before, but plastic is bad for the environment and our bodies (from Bisphenol A leach, etc). Bottled water has less regulations and could cost you an exorbitant of money over even just a year. Switch to glass. If you want to check out a great reusable glass water bottle, go to http://livinglavidaverde.net/store.aspx . Whatever you do stop drinking single use plastic water bottles!!
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hi all if I reuse my plastic bottle lets say a juce bottel for porpell water and I put in the dishwasher what is wrong with that I dont think IT get BPA so whats all the fuss about reuseing it my mom and dad are giveing me a hard time but I like to comsume alot of prepell water form it so whats wrong with it
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I agree completely. Since most people don't recycle ANYTHING, I've since stopped drinking bottled water - no matter how "convenient" it may be. I have bottles at home that I carry with me (filled when I leave the house) that I will refill from a sink or fountain when empty.
As to the post by Holly Mac -- there is plenty of information on the web about bottled water not only not being safe, but that it doesn't actually being from a natural source (i.e., spring water). If you look closely on any label, it usually says "filtered" water or something similar -- which is something that you can get from your own tap. There is also plenty of info on the web about plastics not being healthy -- not only for water bottles, but also for plastics that food is kept in and reheated in.
As for the comment that everyone should just "take care of [him]self", that's part of our country's AND our planet's problem! If there weren't so many wasteful products in our lives, our planet would be a lot cleaner and healthier for it.
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I worry about plastic bags in this world too- we barely do anything to recycle them!
If you are searching for a place to drop off your plastic bags (the kind from grocery stores) then please go to this site- It will give you a list of all locations in your area where you can drop them off.
http://www.plasticbagrecycling.org/01.0/
-Dillon (GreenHome.com)
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Just take care of yourself. Do what is right for you as an individual. Everybody has really good points here about the pros and cons of drinking bottled water. Some people like it and some don't, some people think it's wrong and some people don't. Some people claim they know everything about the issue like bottled water is just tap water from another place - do you have specific information to back that claim? Everybody has an opinion. With over six billion people on this poor planet just about everything we do is 'an issue'. Maybe we should make a real difference and tackle the issue of over doing it in the breeding arena. How 'bout it?
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I agree that for most people bottled water is not needed. But then again most of what we consume is not needed. Bottled water is extremely expensive, but the last place I lived at was very old and "most" of the plumbing had been replaced so I really didn't like to drink the water from the tap and would use the 5 gallon jugs that I took back and exchanged for new. I also would take these bottles to a spring near my family whenever I had a chance to refill it there (best water ever). I try to reuse all of my bottles as much as possible. Making someone not buy there water is the hard part of the battle people believe the water is better they will buy it. First of all if I forget to fill my water bottle before leaving home or run out I will buy water. You will never find me even touching a water fountain--have you ever watched the number of people who put there mouths directly on the nozzle of them. Then what ever they left is kept nice and fresh with the cool water that you are so happy to drink. Lets focus on fixing what we can somewhat. I have lived in states with bottle deposits and those without. None have had deposit on water bottles and I think it should be on all. I know that someone is going to say that anyone who spends $2 on water isn't going to care about $.05 deposit but talk to there 10 yr old about the $15 a month they make collecting those bottles. It makes a huge difference. There is always family/friend who will take those bottles back for the $
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My wife and I spent a year walking along the pacific coast from Seattle out to the Aleutians. By far the most common trash on remote beaches was plastic water bottles... we saw thousands of them. I'm not sure where all these bottles enter the ocean from (cruise ships?). One thing that makes disposable plastic bottles more problematic as wilderness trash is that they are light enough to be carried by strong winds, so they get scattered across the landscape. Most of their impact is probably only aesthetic, unless their decay in the sunlight and by sand abrasion leads to release of damaging toxins.
However, as Julieta says thin plastic bottles are very convenient for carrying water. I think they're also probably much less resource consumptive than heavy Nalgene or aluminum containers. We carried them, replacing them after a hundred refillings or so because we were worried that the plastic might begin decaying and contaminate the water. Amazing that plastic bottles are so overly durable that they can survive for a month in our packs. Some bottles are overbuilt even compared to the usual bottle, such as the over-marketed Fiji brand. We carried four of these for 2 months and they were still in fine shape.
If you want to check out our web page:
www.GroundTruthTrekking.org
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