Plastic is the fastest growing component of the waste stream, a permanent environmental problem because essentially, it never biodegrades. Over 90 percent of the total cost of a plastic water bottle is for bottling, packaging, and marketing, which shows that eliminating the plastic would be a much cheaper, not to mention more sustainable option.
Plastic bottles take 700 years to begin composting, by which time the environment will have already been exhausted by the 80% of bottles that people do not recycle. Because the average American consumes 167 bottles of water a year, the detriment to the environment is staggering.
Consuming bottled water is no more healthy than tap water, although marketers would have us believe otherwise. Water is water and disposables are good for business, but not for consumer value or conservation. By eliminating plastic bottles, we can make way for a much more sustainable and healthy community.
Although plastic bottles are a convenience, hydration stations are just as convenient and are much more environmentally sound.
More than two billion dollars worth of plastic is wasted each year, which is so incredibly harmful for the environment. Though the beverage industries are attempting to make their plastic bottles less damaging, plastic is still a big threat to the environment as a whole.
It takes about 1,100 to 2,000 times as much energy to produce and transport the average bottle of water to Los Angeles as to produce the same amount of tap water, or to refill a reusable bottle. The plastic bottles that are used once and throw away take up more than 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce.
Americans use 25,000,000 plastic beverage bottles every hour!
Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
The Pacific Institute estimates that every used plastic water bottle uses ¼ of its capacity in oil to manufacture, fill, transport, and dispose of it.
It takes 17 million barrels of oil per year to make all the plastic water bottles used in the U.S alone. That’s enough oil to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year.
In 2007, Americans consumed over 50 billion single serve bottles of water; between 30 and 40 million single serve bottles went into landfills each year.
Bottled water costs between 200 and 1000 times what tap water costs.
The recommended eight glasses of water a day, at U.S tap rates equals about $.49 per year, that same amount of bottled water is about $1,400.
Antimony, which is found in PET plastic bottles, in small doses can cause dizziness and depression; in larger doses can cause nausea, vomiting, and death.
Bottled water, packaged and sold in the same state, is exempt from EPA regulatory oversight.
Can you believe that despite these facts 20% of Americans drink only bottled water?!
