Whether you’re walking to class, walking around in a supermarket, or at your friend’s soccer game, chances are you’ll see everyone holding or carrying one thing in common – a water bottle. It has been estimated that 1,000 people open a plastic water bottle every second of every day. Leaving in a hurry? Quick – just grab a disposable water bottle, perfect for on the go. Healthier than a bottle of soda or juice, bottled water is expected to outsell soft drinks in 2017, according to the New York Times. While this is a benefit to society, as drinking water rather than soft drinks is healthier for the human body, it is certainly not a benefit to the environment.
A majority of society today has fallen accustom to using plastic water bottles, drawn to the idea of convenience. Evian, aquafina, dasani, fiji, smart water, deer park, poland spring… These brands have all become popular over the last decade, and I could easily go on and on. The point is, society has grown to think using plastic water bottles is normal because they can be recycled – they can do no harm to the environment – and this is where the facts need to be straightened out.
You finish a water bottle and immediately go to recycle it (hopefully, instead of the trash can…) and think you’re doing the environment a favor. And this is true, most of the time. Recycling is generally better for the environment than waste going to landfills because it takes ⅔ less energy to make new products from recycled plastic than plastic that has gone to a waste landfill. Nonetheless, there are two sides to this truth. It’s sometimes harder to recycle plastic than what most of society thinks. Only about 6.8% percent of total plastic used in the US is actually recycled, but luckily it’s higher for bottles – 37% for sodas and 28% for milk cartons and water bottles. Plastic water bottles and other types of plastic bottles can only be recycled through certain municipalities, depending on that type of plastic. So, throwing your plastic yogurt containers in the same bright blue recycling bin as your milk carton or water bottle might be doing more bad than good.
You might be asking yourself, “Can’t I just look at the numbers on the bottom of plastic containers and sort them into their respective groups?” This is also true, but only to a certain extent. Plastics with a #1 (soda and water bottles) or a #2 (detergent bottles and milk cartons) are considered to be able to be recycled, but sometimes even containers with these numbers cannot be recycled due to dyes, additives and chemicals in the plastic. These additives have different properties (like melting at different temperatures), and therefore cannot be recycled all together.
So how does this connect to the environment? Primarily, there are still many people who don’t recycle – these plastic bottles end up in trash sites which then end up in earth’s bodies of water – creeks, rivers, oceans, etc. Birds, whales, dolphins and other sea animals do not differentiate plastic debris from food and end up ingesting the plastic scraps, adding to the death toll of these animals one by one. Breaking down plastic releases toxins that soak into soil and water – not only destroying and breaking down the environment but harming the animals as well. Additionally, to point out a problem no one talks about – the more water we buy, the less we think we rely on it – but the percentage of safe water is only going to decrease, limiting our supplies of drinking water.
On the other hand, there are people who do not believe in the idea of plastic bottles harming the environment, and to these people, I would encourage you to seek out ‘safer’ disposable bottles. There are forms of disposable water bottles like bottles such as ‘Just Water.’ This bottle is made out of 54% paper, 28% plant-based plastic, and is 100% fully recyclable. Read about these bottles more in-depth here!
Overall, for the sake of the environment, the best option is to use reusable water bottles. Buying multiple – one to keep in your purse or bag, another to keep in your car, some in your kitchen, etc. – is more convenient than society thinks, and far better than using a plastic water bottle each day. These bottles have no harm on the environment, and will protect and sustain the earth for centuries to come.
Sources:
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/06-when-recycling-is-bad-for-the-environment
https://www.nytimes.com/section/science?action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=TopBar&module=HPMiniNav&contentCollection=Science&WT.nav=page
https://www.nytimes.com/section/science/earth?action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=navbar&module=collectionsnav&pagetype=sectionfront&pgtype=sectionfront
This was a very insightful post! It is extremely important to make sure that people know plastic water bottles have many negative impacts on the environment. It is strange to me that people still choose plastic water bottles over reusable ones. It seems that most students at Penn State use reusable water bottles, but I still see people with plastic water bottles and I do not understand it. It is much cheaper to simply have one water bottle and keep filling it up, rather than constantly having to buy new plastic water bottles.
While some may think that tap water is less safe or healthy than tap water, this is not true. Furthermore, according to Food and Water Watch, over half of all bottled water comes from the tap. This shows that the belief many have over tap water being unsafe is false.
Another huge benefit to using a reusable water bottle is that, unlike plastic water bottles, reusable ones do not harm the environment. I was unaware of how low the number of total plastics are actually recycles- 6.8! That is an incredibly low number. I was confused and also intrigued by this fact. So, I researched why so little plastic is recycled. I found that, according to Ecoscramblings, “a container’s recyclability is determined by the market demand for that specific type of reclaimed product (taking into consideration both resin type and shape)”. It was odd to me that shapes of plastics mattered in terms of their chances of being recycled.
It is clear that reusable water bottles save one a great amount of money. Furthermore, these bottles do not have any detrimental impact to the environment. While some may prefer the taste of bottled water, all these other benefits to owning and using a reusable water bottle outweigh insignificant reasons to purchasing bottled water over and over.
Link to Sources: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/about/live-healthy/tap-water-vs-bottled-water
http://ecoramblings.com/why-all-plastic-containers-cant-be-recycled/