Bottled Water

Here it is straight: it’s just not good to drink bottled water. And there are several reasons accounting to that. I’m hoping this post will inform you at the least (possibly convince you to cut back). If you don’t want to know click out now. I’m hoping to get some pictures to upload on here too.

First off, it gets expensive. Think about it. You are paying for something you could get out of your faucet (or drinking fountain for those of you away in college). Investing in a nice BPA free water bottle and using the water that’s free to you can save tons of money. Water is a public resource and what most people don’t know is that bottled water corporations take this free commodity and sells it back to us at a higher cost. That’s right, more than fifty percent of the bottle industry’s water is actually tap water taken from public resources. From what I’ve read and watched in documentaries, there are technically no health hazards in tap water. Purifiers waste a lot of water, but if you don’t like the taste of tap water a purifier is still a better choice than bottled water.

This is on a smaller note and would need its own post to cover all the details on why this is bad, but bottled water uses a lot of resources. Each year 74 million gallons of oil is used to create the plastic bottles. 74 million gallons! Another post for another time.

I love you guys, I really do. I mainly made this post for this paragraph right here. BPA is plastic. Traces of bisphenol A, in a case study tested on thousands of American adults, could be found in 95% of all tested. Traces of plastic. During the process of making bottles (and all other plastics) not all BPA gets locked up into chemical bonds. This excess BPA leaks into the liquid and is swallowed. Human studies of people with concentrations of BPA have been linked with cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and liver enzyme abnormalities. It also acts as an endocrine hormone disrupter, meaning it messes with your hormones. Even low level exposures of BPA can have an effect on your health. And it was only just in 2012 that the FDA banned BPA in baby bottles and children’s drinking cups. My professor said that the cheap BPA free water bottles that are sold at Five Below, Wal-Mart, etc. still contain traces of BPA. However, it is still usable. You can get rid of this small amount by washing the bottle and then leaving it full of water for a day or two. Leaving it sit in the sun will be even better. Dump the water out, wash it again, and you’re good to go.

BPA isn’t just in plastic bottles. BPA is in a lot of plastic food containers and bags. I’m covering bottled water.

The amount of people who litter, disgusts me. Look at this:

 

 

This next one is really disturbing so I want to warn you of what it is. It's a dead bird cut open to see its stomach and what it has eaten. If you don't want to see it.... scroll fast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the Great Garbage Patch of the Pacific Ocean. Ocean currents pick up plastics, and whatever isn’t eaten by birds ends up here. I feel like this doesn’t need much of a further explanation because this is disgusting. And it just has to stop. The reduction of water bottles would greatly help. There’d still be plastic and junk here, but there would be less of it.

I’m not saying to stop drinking out of plastic bottles completely. I understand if you’re on a trip, or out busy, and you need something to drink and just pick up a bottle of something. But I am trying to look out for you. I honestly haven’t had a bottled anything in a couple months now. At least I think it’s been that long. I don’t know, time has sort of blended lately. Anyway, the point is I’m not going to drink from a plastic bottle unless I have no other option. I never used to drink bottled water even before I knew all this. I never understood the point of wasting money on it if it magically comes out of my sink for free. Yeah, I’d get a bottled pop every now and then, but I’d only get water if I had too. But I see people every day, especially in my choir class, who drink constantly from plastic bottles and I’m thinking “why?”. If you want further information feel free to comment or text me. Also, if there’s something else you’d like to be informed about, leave it in the comments. I’d be happy to make a post on it. Actually, leave a comment anyway and tell me what you think about all this.

Mainly used my textbook Principles of Environmental Science 7th edition by William P Cunningham and Mary Ann Cunningham, notes from my professor, and the documentary Tapped. (We get these random pageviews and I just wanted to stick credibility here to be safe.) Also, here is a trailer that pretty much sums up the documentary Tapped and its worth checking out if you have the time.

 

Over and out.