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Cera Hambrick
Prof. Tatum
English 1020
7th March 2019
Water Bottles: Why We Should Abandon Them
Life is quick and you need something to grab to drink as you run out the door to face
your day. You swing open your fridge and grab a cold water bottle that is waiting for you on the
bottom shelf. You don’t even think about it, you just grab and go. When you get thirsty while
you do your routines, you dig in your bag and crack it open to take a drink. You think to yourself
that without a water bottle, you could have waited till the next water fountain or till you got
home. However, you don’t think what really happens the moment that purchased the water
bottle.
The water bottle is convenient and easy. In the previous paragraph, the scenario is a
prime example of the convenience of a water bottle; especially if you are someone on the go. The
convenience of the bottle is definitely outweighed by the problem it gives. The plastic that the
bottle is made out of pollutes the environment and harms wildlife. The cost of producing the said
bottle is extremely expensive and is cheaper to produce tap water. Most importantly, it is
harming us as well due to health organization not paying attention to the companies and also the
misleading advertising.
Do you ever think about where the bottle you throw away go? Most end up in the dump
where they stay. According to RiverKeeper, “About 86 percent of empty plastic water bottles in
the United States land in the garbage instead of being recycled¨ (RiverKeep web.). In these in
landfills, the bottles stack up and harms the environment; however, if recycled, could save the
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environment. Rick Leblanc says that a plastic bottle takes up to 450 years or more to decompose
in the landfills. In this amount of time, the bottles could be recycled to be reused so it does not
just sit in the landfill. The landfill is not the only concern with wasting of the plastic bottles. Out
of in our oceans is a large pile of throwing around and the waste that is in the island of trash is
plastic. ¨It is estimated that 1.15 to 2.41 metric tonnes of plastic are entering the ocean each year”
(TheOceanCleanUp web.). The pile is being fueled by the large intake of plastic that the ocean
from us not properly disposing of the bottles. The pile is estimated to have twice the area of
Texas or thrice as big as France, according to The Ocean Clean Up website. In this floating pile
of trash, it contains ¨[...] 1.8 trillion plastic pieces were estimated to be floating in the patch - a
plastic count that is equivalent to 250 pieces of debris for every human in the world (web.).”
With these large amounts of plastic floating around in the ocean, it harms the wildlife that lives
in those waters. The wildlife confuses the plastic for food causing malnutrition and they get
tangled up in the large pieces of plastic. The large amount of usage of the plastic bottles not only
harms us on land with the landfills and littering, but as well in the ocean. “Single-use plastic
water bottles represent one of the most easily obviated threats currently plaguing the
environment” (Clemson Staff pg 671).
The cost to produce and prevent the harm that water bottle cause is large. First, the cost
of the producing the plastic and the water costs the economy a lot. According to Linda
Poppenheimer, an experiment conducted by the International Bottled Water Association found
that water bottling plants used 1.39 liters of water to produce one single liter of water, thus
producing 10.9 million gallons of water required using 4.2 million gallons from the water supply
(Linda Poppenheimer web.). By doing this, the water being used to produce the water bottles are
being wasted. The cost of purchasing a case of water bottles annually equals $525.60 per year if
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you are paying 1.44 for each gallon in that case; however, to purchase tap water is roughly $0.03
per gallon which equals $10.65 per year (Poppenheimer web). Therefore, one could pay $514.95
more to purchase water. What makes this more interesting is that water bottling plants use tap
water to fill 40% of the water bottles (RiverKeeper web). Basically, you are purchasing a water
bottles for the illusion of having pure water. With producing water bottles, the water bottling
plants can take as much of the water supply as it wants to, which harms the local economies of
the town nearby. Withdrawing as much water they want, they could do this during droughts or
water shortage. The constant drawing from local water supplies at any point in time also harms
the economy due to lacking the necessities for their citizens to survive these water related issues.
The cost of disposing of the water bottles are costly too. “Cities across the nation spend $70
million annually to dispose of plastic water bottles” (RiverKeeper web). The money being
wasted to get rid of the plastic could be used in different ways to help the city improve.
However, the money is being used to get ruin of something that could easily solved. The United
Nation reports that clean up or repair environmental damage cost around 13 million per year,
again that money could be used elsewhere to improve the world (OceanCleanUp web). The fact
that someone would pay twice as money to fix something that the plastic from bottles than it is to
purchase them is dire and tragic.
When you are drinking the water from the plastic bottle, you don’t think about the harm
that water could do to you and how untested it is. Almost all of the product that is produced is
tested by companies to ensure the safety of the customer that is consuming it. It is a extreme
reliability issue if not tested properly. The Food and Drink Association or FDA, is an association
that checks various food and drink products for their safety for human consumption; however,
they fall short on testing the plastic of the bottle and the water in it. According to the
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RiverKeeper website, the FDA requires bottling plants to only test for bacterial contamination in
the water they sell only once a week and only four empty bottles for contamination in the plastic
every three months. Not to mention, FDA does not require the companies to test for DEP or any
other phthalates that could possibly cause cancer when consumed (RiverKeeper web). The FDA
tests tap water stricter than the water in the bottles; therefore, it can be concluded that the tap
water is more safe. You have a high risk of drinking water that was not been tested properly for a
phthalates that can give a deadly disease. The water is not the only concern, the plastic can leach
chemicals into the water when heated. The water bottle that you find in your car that you left
there a few weeks before is filled with chemicals that can harm you. A new study found that a
chemical known as bisphenol A, which is the chemical to make the plastic for bottles, is released
into the water when the plastic is heated and it can be shown in one’s urine. “Exposure to BPA,
used in the manufacture of polycarbonate and other plastics, has been shown to interfere with
reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and
diabetes in humans”(Harvard T.H Chan web). The study concluded when higher levels of BPA
are found in urine is that the chemical is in the liquid they drunk from. The lack of testing and
other poor regulations is another reason that the water bottle that should be left in the past.
Water bottles are convenient and a luxury to some people in the world due to various
problems with their own water. In places in Flint, Michigan and Ukraine, the water is not safe to
consume due to contamination. To solve this problem, water bottles are sent to them for the fact
that the water is purified and is safe to drink. Charles Fishman agrees with this with the
following statement, “... unless you’re struggling in the aftermath of a natural disaster, unless
you live in a developing world nation without safe tap water, all bottled water really falls into
that category: luxury, indulgence, convenience” (Charles Fishman pg. 673). In time of disaster
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and harmful contamination in the water, water bottle are the only way to give them water;
however, that is the only time that we should use water bottles. Mentioned in the previous
quotation, the convenience of grabbing a water bottle from the fridge than filling up a refillable
bottle. The convenience should not be the sole reason you use them due to the large health risks
and the environmental issues. Another issue is the fact that we should ban not just water bottles,
but the plastic bottles for coke and other bottled drinks. “But I don’t understand how campuses
can ban sale of bottled water while continuing to sell Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Vitamin
Water, and Red Bull (Fishman pg. 674). With the debate of using plastic bottles, the way to solve
the issue is to completely cut out the usage of it. We can use different kind of bottles to replace
plastic bottles.
The argument over water bottles are a constant battle due to the different factors that go
into it. The concept of the convenience and having ready to go is the mask of what is truly
behind it. The mask hides the fact that it harms the environment in multiple ways than one; the
large amounts of the plastic bottles that find its home there and the mass in the ocean that is
filled to the brim. The costs to produce and buy water bottles are twice as expensive than the tap
water that is already in your sink. Not to mention,the costs that water bottles put on the
environment due to cities and oceanic clean ups having to funnel money to fix the plastic
bottles.The FDA does not properly test and regulate the bottles and the water that you put in your
fridge. The water could be filled with different cancer-causing agents and the plastic leaches
unsafe chemicals into the already unsafe water. The pros of water bottles are that they can be
used to aid the areas that lack the proper water sources and the convenience of it. It is true that
water bottles can aid ones in need; however, the concept of convenience should not cloud what is
happening once you drop it into the trash can.
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Work Cited
“BPA, Chemical Used to Make Plastics, Found to Leach from Polycarbonate Drinking Bottles
Into Humans.” News, 13 Jan. 2014, www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/bpachemical-plastics-leach-polycarbonate-drinking-bottles-humans/.
Ink, Social. “The Problem with Bottled Water.” Riverkeeper,
www.riverkeeper.org/campaigns/tapwater/bottled-water/.
Kirszner, Lauren G. and Stephen R. Mandell. Practical Argument: A Text and Anthology, 3rd
edition. Boston, MA: Bedford, St. Martin’s, 2016. Print.
Crimson Staff. “Vote Yes on the Bottled Water Ban.” Kirszner 672-673
Fishman, Charles. “Bottled Water is Silly - But So Is Banning it.” Kirszner 673-676.
LeBlanc, Rick. “How Long Will It Take That Bag of Trash to Decompose in a Landfill?” The
Balance Small Business, www.thebalancesmb.com/how-long-does-it-take-garbage-todecompose-2878033.
Ocean Cleanup. “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” The Ocean Cleanup,
www.theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/.
Poppenheimer, Linda. “Bottled Water – Cost and Sustainability.” Green Groundswell, 18 Nov.
2018, greengroundswell.com/bottled-water-cost-and-sustainability/2015/01/26/.