Bottled Water | Teen Ink

Bottled Water

February 24, 2017
By ABBEY!! BRONZE, Olympia, Washington
ABBEY!! BRONZE, Olympia, Washington
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

50% countries have to drink bottled water. While bottled water is a necessary item to most people, the effect on the environment is incredibly bad. Bottled water should be banned.

First, bottled water tends to be the same as tap water, bottled water isn't any cleaner than tap water. Most bottled water is just purified tap water. According to Dr. Sarah Janssen, science fellow with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco,"Bottled water isn't any purer than what comes out of the tap.” Also, bottled water isn’t any safer than tap water. The plastic that bottles use, can contain bacteria that can affect your health. As the bottles can be a risk to your health, the water can be dangerous too! To get to the factory where they bottle the water, the water has to travel through rusty pipes, as the water travels through the pipes, it can collect rust on the way, leaving it with a copper taste.

Second, bottled water is a harm to people and animals. Plastic bottles have a huge carbon foot print on animals, especially ocean life. An average of 5.25 trillion bottles end up in the ocean a year. The plastic bottles break down and dissolve into small, microscopic pieces, that fish eat, then are caught and sold to humans. Not only does the plastic break down, things like plastic pop rings get caught around animals necks. According to a statement from the Mayor’s office, “More than 1 billion plastic water bottles end up in California’s landfills each year, taking 1,000 years to biodegrade and leaking toxic additives such as phthalates into the groundwater.” Plastic bottles are also extremely harmful to people. PET is a chemical found in plastic. PET  is a dangerous chemical that can leak into your water if left in the sun too long, it also is a harm to your health. PET can cause dizziness, nausea, vomiting, depression, and possibly death.

 

On the other hand plastic water bottles are very use full when traveling or hiking, this makes sense because plastic bottles are easy to carry around. However, to make them is a huge waste of resources. Plastic bottles use way too much gas. Therefore  the plastic used alone is 117 million gallons of gas, that much gas could fuel 1.33 million cars a year. Not only are bottles a waste of resources, they waste a lot or cost too much money. Plastic bottles can cost 15 million dollars to make a year.


Safe, clean water is in everyday life for us to live. We need water to live. We have responsibilities as humans to keep our earth clean. For the next several generations, the garbage and waste can affect future generations life.


 



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