Assignment: Fix the essay below according to these directions:
1. Make sure the margins are set at 1” (found under “layout”)
2. Font= Times New Roman, 12 pt.
3. Add a heading in the top left corner—with your name, date, hour, and
assignment name (for this, use “Formatting Practice”)
4. Entire text should be double-spaced (highlight and select 2.0)—there does
NOT need to be an extra space between paragraphs.
5. INDENT each paragraph (use the tab key)
6. Correct each citation—refer to the articles attached in BB. (Author last
name page#)
7. Add a Works Cited page (should be a SEPARATE page in the same
document)—see information in BB.
8. Delete these directions.
9. Save this in your U Drive (I recommend uploading to
Drobox/SkyDrive/Evernote as well), and then show me when you are
done.
When was the last time that you drank from a water bottle? If you’re like many
Americans, it was probably very recently. In fact, Americans buy approximately 30
billion bottles of water per year (SOURCE #1). That is a lot of water and a lot of
plastic! Of course bottled water is good for you and is very convenient, but the
plastic that it comes in is not good for the environment. In fact, it takes 2.7 tons of
plastic every year to produce these bottles, and the process to manufacture this
plastic requires 2,000 times more energy, in the form of crude oil, than it takes to
produce the same amount of tap water (SOURCE #2). It seems then, that it would
be logical to just stop producing bottled water, but many people argue against it
because of its convenience and necessity for many people in the world. Bottled
water may be convenient, but because of the cost and the damage to our
environment, it should be banned in our community, and people can drink from
reusable bottles instead.
To start with, drinking bottled water is a waste of money when you have perfectly
good water from your kitchen sink. In fact, according to “Is Bottled Water Really
Better?” 25 to 40 percent of “all bottled water is tap water” (SOURCE #1). It
doesn’t make sense to pay for individual bottles when you can just get it from
your sink; you would be drinking almost the same thing. Bottled water is not
cheap, either, even though it may seem that way in small quantities. However, “if
you were to drink tap water for the sometimes-recommended eight glasses a day,
it would cost about $0.49 at the end of the year,” but if you drank bottled water
instead, it would be about $1,400 (SOURCE #2). Consider all that you could buy
with an extra $1,399.51 if bottled water were banned, not to mention how much
you would be helping the environment.
Water bottles are of course convenient, but there’s no reason why people can’t
drink from reusable water bottles. There are so many varieties and sizes to
choose from, not to mention sources of water all over the place to fill them up. In
that sense, a reusable water bottle is even more convenient than the bottled
water. Millions of dollars are spent on utilities to keep the tap water supply clean
and safe (SOURCE #3), so it would be a waste to not drink from it. Using a
reusable bottle and filling it up with tap water then is convenient, cost-effective,
and far more earth-friendly.
Therefore, because of the cost and potential damage to the environment, bottled
water should be banned in favor of the more convenient and environmentfriendly reusable water bottle. There isn’t much difference between bottled water
and the water that comes from the sink. If the content is the same, it is more
logical to just purchase one reusable water bottle that can be refilled instead of a
new bottled water multiple times throughout the day. This would save the
average consumer more money and send less plastic water bottles to landfills.
Places such as Plymouth State University have already begun to implement
bottled water bans in an attempt to make their school greener (SOURCE #2). If
this pattern spreads throughout the country, Americans will have more money in
their pockets and a cleaner planet to live on.