The Downside of Bottled Water

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Choosing to drink bottled water over soda or juice is widely known to be a great choice for your health. Water is a natural non-calorie drink with no sugar, sodium, or fat and many people prefer the taste and convenience of bottled water. But this choice of bottled water still damagingly impacts Earth in many ways. Municipal (tap) water should be the first choice for Americans when they want a drink of water, however, marketing schemes have convinced Americans that bottled water is the purer and more healthful option. Drinking bottled water instead of tap water is a poor choice because the environmental pollution and waste of resources accompanying production are unjustified when the end result is of equal or lesser quality to tap water.
As we needlessly increase our negative impact on the environment by consuming and producing bottled water our lives and activities will be impacted back in turn. Increased pollution from production and shipment will harm our lungs and increase the pace of climate change. Use of resources surrounding bottled water will take away our opportunity to use those resources in vital ways in the future. And all disposed bottles will add to the size of landfills, ruining arable land.
Municipal water is considered second to bottled water so the stereotype about the environmental health viability of municipal water needs to be removed. The existence of these stereotypes increases the revenue of the bottled water companies because consumers who have adequate municipal water will still purchase bottled water. This hurts consumers’ ability to use their money for other, more necessary purposes. This problem has occurred since municipal water achieved quality standards equal to bottled water with the advent of chl...

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...om http://www.allaboutwater.org/environment.html
Arnold, E. (2006). Earth policy institutes. Retrieved from http://www.bvsde.paho.org/bvsacd/cd47/bottled.pdf
Didier, S. (2011). Water bottle pollution facts. Retrieved from http://greenliving.nationalgeographic.com/water-bottle-pollution-2947.html Gayot. (2012). Gayot: the guide to the good life. Best ¬– Top 10 Bottled Water Brands.
Retrieved from http://www.gayot.com/lifestyle/health/top10-bottled-water/main.html
Natural Resources Defense Council. (2000). NRDC bottled water. Bottled Water:
Pure Drink or Pure Hype. Retrieved from http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/bwinx.asp
Natural resources defense council. (2008). Retrieved from http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qbw.asp Pacific institute. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.pacinst.org/topics/water_and_sustainability/bottled_water/bottled_water_and_energy.html

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