 |
| source: https://ckphu.com/2016/08/tap-water-vs-bottled-water/ |
How often have you heard that you
should drink 2 liters of water per day? Surely many times: it’s no secret that
staying hydrated during the day is essential and provides a lot of benefits for
your body. Yes, drinking water is healthy,
but using disposable plastic water bottles is not sustainable neither for the
environment nor for your wallet.
Who
would actually pay to drink water when they could get it for free from their
tap? That’s just crazy. Yet the water bottle
industry is in expansion, benefits from consumerism and has become an essential
item in an average person's life: more than 50 billion water bottles are sold globally every year, 1500 of
them are used every second in the US alone.
What are the resources
incurred to manufacture water bottles?
 |
| source: https://www.pinterest.it/pin/45176802487144464/ |
The
environmental impact and the amount of energy needed to make bottled water
ready for consumption- from pumping and processing to transporting- are
profound. Plastic bottles require about three
times as much water for their production than they can actually hold. This means
that for every liter of water that a bottle can hold, three liters are needed
to make it. Every year 300 millions kg of CO2 are emitted in the atmosphere and
17 million barrels of oil are used just for the production of all the water
bottles. To put it in scale,
that’s an equivalent amount of oil to fuel a million cars for a whole year. Another way to think
of it is to imagine the water bottle filled ¼ with oil: that’s the amount of
fossil fuels necessary just to manufacture it. This is an insane amount of resources
for something that is completely unneeded. It’s true that approximately 780 million people around the world, more than twice the population of the US, don’t have
access to clean and safe water supplies. In this case, as well as in emergency
situations, bottled water plays a crucial
role. But the point is that bottled water should be the exception rather than the rule
since it’s entirely needless for anyone with access to potable tap water.
Is bottled water better than tap
water?
Despite the fact that tap water is declared safe for
consumption, there is a common perception that bottled water is cleaner and tastier
than tap water. However there is no rational in believing so, as the majority of evidence shows that it’s actually worse for you. Plastic leaches into the water it holds and it has been linked to
causing different health issues, from asthma and dizziness to more serious
ones, such as reproductive problems. Harmful hormone-disrupting chemicals leach
into the bottled water we drink after as little as two months and a half of storage, or much
faster if the bottles are left in the sun, like in the car. The perception that bottled water has a better flavor is indeed just a
popular belief as in blind taste test people are
not able to differentiate between the two. The labels on bottled
water often depict a beautiful mountain stream, but that doesn't mean the water
inside is pure and unspoilt. Only some bottled water come from springs or
groundwater sources: around 25% of bottled water is actually just repackaged tap
water. These companies filter or radiate tap water
with ultraviolet light before selling it, but is it enough to justify it being
sold to you at several thousand times the cost of municipal tap water? Bottled
water costs approximately 2000 times more than tap water, can you imagine
paying 2000 times the price of anything else? How about a 10000 euros sandwich?
I’m sure you would refuse to pay such a price, then why do you accept it in
case of water?
What’s their impact on the environment?
 |
| source: https://www.pinterest.it/pin/487444359645367809/ |
What can we all do?
 |
| source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/clear-glass-h2o-bottle-113734/ |
Pollution is quickly becoming the issue and the
threat of our century, as the WHO estimates it to be one of the biggest causes of death
around the world, killing about 7 million people, one in eight of total global
deaths per year. The bottled water industry is an example of
how manufactured demand pushes what we don’t need and destroys what we need the
most. A cultural
shift is needed because bottled water represents a high cost not only on a
personal level scale but most importantly the greater cost comes to all of us
as a society, country and interconnected world community. Following a simple reduce, reuse, recycle lifestyle
means that you are actively saving the environment and you avoid pointless
expenses. The first thing you should do is buy a reusable glass or stainless steel water bottle and refill it at
home or at water fountains. Moreover,
you can also go the extra mile and demand investments to improve water systems
and ensure that clean tap water is available for everybody. Finally and most importantly, you can speak up and
spread the voice among your friends and family on just how much plastic bottled water is negatively
impacting the environment and convince them to adopt some simple but effective
good practices.
SOURCES:
http://pacinst.org/publication/bottled-water-and-energy-a-fact-sheet/
https://www.thenational.ae/uae/global-environmental-impact-of-bottled-water-is-enormous-1.88275