Bottled Water | Teen Ink

Bottled Water

February 24, 2017
By MELINDA123 BRONZE, Olympia, Washington
MELINDA123 BRONZE, Olympia, Washington
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

85% of people waste money everyday to buy bottled water. But the only thing they know about it are the general pros everyone thinks of. Once you learn the terrible cons, you will want to ban bottled water for good.

One reason is that bottled water is the same thing as tap water you can get anywhere in most of people’s homes. Both tap and the water in bottles come from the same places. The water comes from town supply like streams, wells, and assortment of springs. All the water we drink also come to us by going through pipes which makes them have the same percentage of contaminates. Lots of pipes have lead in them which can be passed on into the water. We also have no evidence of how clean it really is as the water systems are aging. From the article, “Bottled versuse Tap”, Dr. Sarah Janssen stated, “Bottled water isn’t any safer or purer than what comes out of tap. In fact, it’s less well-regulated, and you’re more likely to know what’s in tap.”

Another reason is that the water bottles we throw away become trash. Once the bottles are out of our sight, they make huge piles of landfill in animal habitats. Animals do not notice our plastic water bottles are trash so they mistakenly eat it and get sick which will lead to death. The resources to make the plastic bottles are things that could be well used for humans. The plastic bottles require oil to be made but instead of using it for that we could use it to fill millions of cars a year. It take three times as much to make the bottle than to fill it which technically means we’re spending our money for the plastic bottle instead of the water we want to drink from it. According to the article, “Goodbye, Bottled Water”, the communications director for Mayor Anderson, Patrick Thorson pointed out, “Each year 1.5 million barrels of petroleum are used to produce plastic water bottles in the United States. That’s enough to supply 250,000 homes with electricity.”

On the other hand, some people would not ban bottled water because they think it is convenient. This point of view makes sense because we can all say we’ve seen a vending machine in the stores we walk into everyday. However, one water bottle you might think is cheap but once you add the cost of all the water bottles you’ve bought the last month, you can see how much you’re taking out of your pocket that fast. There are some people who cannot afford it which makes the vending machines useless and most municipal water costs less than one cent per gallon. Also, you can always just get the water for free at home by putting a cup under the faucet. Therefore, bottled water is not a good product and should be banned.

Safe, clean water is important in our everyday routine. We need to be careful and think about the resources we’re taking up now and look ahead of how it will affect the future. We should be mindful and try to balance out as much of the access provided now and for future generations. Convenient, yet dangerous, plastic bottles are a long-term problem that will have a bad effect for all of us.



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