The Water Bottle
By:
Grant Capter
Trevor Lowe
Use of a Water Bottle
Many different water bottles are used daily. They have
developed over time to ensure the most water, and in the
best shape. Above this text box you can see some of the
bottles have a slim shape so they fit in the palm of your
hand.
The Timeline of a Water
Bottle
Water Bottle Timeline
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(1845) Hiram Ricker begins bottling and selling the spring water on his
property in Poland Spring, Maine, as a cure for kidney ailments. Poland
Spring is born. The first shipments are 3-gallon jugs that sell for 15 cents at
a local grocer.
(1863) Perrier water is bottled by decree of Napoleon III “For the good of
France”.
(1907) A plant with an underground conveyor system opens at Poland
Spring. Bottling room walls are lined with Carrera glass for ease of cleaning;
employees must shower and change into white linen uniforms before work.
(1912) Halsey Taylor invents a water fountain for drinking, founding an
eponymous company to market it. The water cooler office-gossip
phenomenon is born.
(1968) DuPont engineer Nathaniel Wyeth (Brother of painter Andrew)
invents polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for use in soda bottles. 16 years
later, PET will feed a surge of single-serve bottled-water sales.
(1977) Perrier, in the green glass, bowling pin shaped bottle, launches in the
USA, backed by millions of dollars in marketing. Yuppies rejoice. Sales soar
to $20million in its first year, and triple that in its second..
Water Bottle Timeline Cont.
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(1994) Pepsi tests a brand of purified tap water called Aquafina in Wichita,
Kansas.
(1999) Coke introduces Dasani, purified tap water with minerals added in.
Both Coke and Pepsi put the water through a hyper-filtration system in order
to laud its purity to consumers.
(2000) Poland Spring, now part of Nestle, opens an enormous plant 40
miles south of Poland, Maine. By 2006, the facility is producing enough
each year to give a 6-pack to every man, woman and child in the US.
(2001) Aquafina becomes the top-selling bottled water in America.
(2006) Bottled Water environmental concerns begin to affect American
culture slightly.
(2007) As of 2007, Italians drink the most bottled water in the world
per/person at 50 gallons/person a year.
(1989) The Los Angeles Times declares: “The most intriguing (Fashion)
accessory to come out of the ‘80s is the Evian water bottle” of the French
Company Danone
Manufacturing Plastic
The technological road from oil field to finished plastic product has numerous
fascinating side trips. Here’s the route taken in the petroleum-to-plastics
process:
1. Petroleum is drilled and transported to a refinery.
2. Crude oil and natural gas are refined into ethane, propane, hundreds of other
petrochemical products and, of course, fuel for your car.
3. Ethane and propane are "cracked" into ethylene and propylene, using hightemperature furnaces.
4. Catalyst is combined with ethylene or propylene in a reactor, resulting in "fluff,"
a powdered material (polymer) resembling laundry detergent.
5. Fluff is combined with additives in a continuous blender.
6. Polymer is fed to an extruder where it is melted.
7. Melted plastic is cooled then fed to a pelletizer that cuts the product into small
pellets.
8. Pellets are shipped to customers.
9. Customers manufacture plastic products by using processes such as extrusion,
injection molding, blow molding, etc.
Disposal Facts
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In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each but only recycled
an average of 23 percent. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfills.
Bottled water costs between $1 and $4 per gallon, and 90 percent of the
cost is in the bottle, lid and label.
According to the Beverage Marketing Corp, the average American
consumed 1.6 gallons of bottled water in 1976. In 2006 that number jumped
to 28.3 gallons.
It takes over 1.5 million barrels of oil to manufacture a year’s supply of
bottled water. That’s enough oil to fuel 100,000 cars.
Eight out of 10 plastic water bottles become landfill waste.
In 2007 we spent $16 billion on bottled water. That’s more than we spent on
iPods or movie tickets.
Plastic bottles can take up to 1000 years before they begin to decompose
once buried.
If everyone in NYC gave up water bottles for one week, they would save 24
million bottles from being landfilled. One month on the same plan would
save 112 million bottles, and one year would save 1.328 billion bottles from
going into the landfill.
Life of a Water Bottle
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more than 1 billion water bottles are winding up in the
trash in California each year. That translates into nearly
3 million empty water bottles going to the trash EVERY
day and an estimated $26 million in unclaimed California
Refund Value (CRV) deposits annually. If recycled, the
raw materials from those bottles could be used to make
74 million square feet of carpet, 74 million extra large Tshirts or 16 million sweaters, among other things.
The bottles also present significant air pollution concerns
as many are incinerated with regular trash. Anyone who
has seen a plastic bottle melt knows of the toxic smoke
and fumes it can create. These fumes not only pose
health risks, they create “green house gases” that attack
the ozone layer.
Bibliography
Bottled Water: Timeline © 2009 St. John's University
This website tells us about the timeline of the water bottle.
http://www.stjohns.edu/academics/provost/dialogues/water/water/history.stj
How Are Plastics Made?
This website tells us about how plastics and the water bottle materials are
made.
http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/funexperiments/quick/plastic.html
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Plastic Water Bottles Not Being Recycled
This website talks about global warming and how water bottles contribute
http://www.consrv.ca.gov/index/news/2003%20News%20Releases/Pages/NR2
003-13_Water_Bottle_Crisis.aspx
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