Pure water, better from a plastic bottle or from the tap?
Zack Braasch
CS220: English Composition
February 15, 2014
THIS IS A DRAFT
The notion that the water that is in the clear plastic bottle just purchased is pure; purer than the water flowing from the tap is the fundamental reason of choice, one over the other. Millions upon millions of people every day make that choice with a confidence anchored in the trust that the company name on the plastic bottle guarantees it. The choice and use of this source of water purity is at the heart of a growing controversy. More importantly this choice has become both a personal and environmental health problem that has grown far beyond what anyone had predicted earlier when it seemed absurd to pay for a bottle of water when you could have a drink right out of the tap for free. Adding further to the growth of water in a plastic bottle across the world, we have expanded our love affair with the prestige of a name brand water bottle associated more with its’ status rather than its’ purity and thirst quenching capacity.
Essentially we have been sold a lie not a promise. We have been duped not assured. We have been seduced not ethically inspired into a practice of drinking behavior that is crushing our personal budget economy and well as planting an ecological time-bomb that will make toxic the environment of our children’s future. To address this futuristic hydro-apocalypse, I am proposing a radical solution that targets this silently growing disaster from a three point pincher strategy aimed at number one; a massive population re-education and cheaply effective home practice of tap water filtration of tap water aimed at teaching the merits and rewards of this new pa...
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... Buying Bottled Water?” Bawell Water Ionizers, FL (PRWEB) June 02, 2013
“What is BPA, and what are the concerns about BPA?”, Katherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D.© 1998-2013 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER).
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Charles Moore, Gwen Lattin, Ann Zellers, "A Brief Analysis of Organic Pollutants Sorbed to Pre- and post- Production Plastic Particles from the Los Angeles and San Gabriel River Watersheds," presented at the Plastic Debris, Rivers to Sea Conference, September 2005, Redondo Beach, CA.
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Which means their obviously bad for the aquatic marine life environment & are cause many different forms of damage for them & us as one. On p.g. 23 of The New York Times upfront magazine “Birds,fish, sea turtles, & others are getting tangled in plastic bags or mistake them for food & choke”. Someone else might argue that they could the plastic bags in landfills instead of oceans. But that counter- argument is flawed because you’re just polluting by burning plastic which is bad on our part we’re not doing our part to support & taking care of the earth. Plastic in the ocean isn't just bad for plants & animals but for humans too because of the food chain some of us eat animals as a meat source such as aqua marine life like fish. If the fishermen catch fish that have been eating plastic then it's in our food supply if we eat that fish it's gonna be bad for us so many will end up getting sick from the plastic inside of the fish then what will we do our aqua marine food supply will go down the drain we couldn’t eat the fish since it's basically contaminated with plastic that we’re dumping there instead of trying to fix it & getting rid of plastic bags for good for the good of the earth. We’re causing damage towards the earth by dumping all that plastic into the ocean which damages our water supply it’ll poison us although we clean the water it depends on how big the plastic particles are, it’ll make us sick & sense it’s been lying in the oceans could bring in new pathogens &
The plastic apocalypse is upon us. Our oceans are currently burdened by massive expanses of floating plastic products and shreds extending farther than the eye can see in multiple locations. The biggest of these, located in the North Pacific Ocean,1 is known by many as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This dangerous collection of trash is surrounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre,1 or a series of circling currents located in the Southern Hemisphere that carry plastics and other slow-degrading garbage and trap them inside its bounds.2 This specific Garbage Patch stretches from North America to Japan and the plastic-to-water ratio varies throughout.1 Because of this phenomenon, plastic is being distributed throughout oceans and deposited
M., Gutierrez…). This is something that the Marine Debris Program is looking to eliminate. By removing the plastic from the water, and preventing it from leaking its chemicals, the eating of the plastic in general, and the prospect of these plastics being breeding grounds for dangerous pathogens, the marine environment would be safer for animals and humans alike. So, it is clear, the removal of this harmful debris, specifically plastic is something that must be done through this Citizen Science
With the uproar over BPA and all the bad press it has been receiving there are those out there who believe that there is no issue concerning BPA. Some scientists have had problems recreating similar results from the experiments done by early researchers. Even the FDA and toxicologist scientists have worked together to study and understand the chemical compound with no results of it being harmful or deadly. The plastic industry has revolutionized our world when it comes to how we depend on their products in our everyday lives, but ...
As the bottled water becomes more popular, people prefer to drink bottle water over tap water. According to them, it has a better quality and taste. Unfortunately, people are being fooled by the water industries. The “purified” water, as its label, comes from municipal reserves. This research will discuss:
Piringer, O., & Baner, A. (2008). Plastic packaging: interactions with good and pharmaceuticals. New York: Wiley-VCH.
Recently, an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean was found to be polluted with 38 million pieces of plastic that had been carried over by currents (Wang, “No one lives on this remote Pacific island”). The island, dubbed ‘trash island’, is home to diverse animal populations that have all been devastated by the pollution. On the beach, hundreds of birds were seen dead by reporters and scientists. When analyzed, the primary cause of death turned out to be consumption of plastic. When animals ingest plastic, it clogs their stomach and poisons their body with toxic chemicals. These toxic chemicals cause an array of issues, such as reproductive and endocrine problems. Eventually, this leads to death (Knoblauch, “The environmental toll of plastics”). But due to the nature of plastics, it can take hundreds or even thousands of years to completely degrade, meaning that as plastic pollution continues to build up, more places like ‘trash island’ will be discovered. According to conservation scientist Alex Bond, “…[The island] is just an indicator of what’s floating around out there” (Wang, “No one lives on this remote Pacific
This pollution problem is so ubiquitous plastic can be found throughout the marine environment from coastlines to near shore lagoons to remote ocean hotspots where plastics caught up in marine currents. And gathered up into huge garbage patches that swirl
For ever water bottle made, non-renewable resources are wasted to produce an unnecessary luxury. For the bottled water Americans enjoy, seventeen million barrels of oil are used (excluding transportation), which could fuel more than 1.3 million cars for a year. Most water is imported and exported from places that are thousands of miles away, like Fiji. Although oil is controversial in nature, for every one liter of water produced, three liters are used; the excess water wasted can supply clean water to the world’s poorest countries. Moreover, the energy used in bottle production can supply energy to over 190,000 homes. The resources that can be replaced by ceasing the production of water bottles can solve many global problems faced by a growing population.
According to the “Competition in the Bottled Water Industry in 2006 Case,” bottled water industry became the one of the world’s most attractive beverage categories, as more and more people began to focus on health and fitness. Consumers start realizing the need of proper hydration, and they began purchasing bottled water instead of drinking tap water, because they were worried about safety of tap water, which tasted like chemicals. Actually, tap water contained chemicals, such as chlorine and fluoride, which are harmful for human body; however, this problem was solved when the bottled water was brought to the market. Due to bottled water’s convenience, purity, and portability, and safety, bottled water industry began to rise rapidly. During
Plastic has an extreme impact on the environment. Trash, consisting of paper or organic waste, decomposes after a while, unlike plastic in which one plastic bottle takes from 450 up to 1000 years to decompose. Considering that the United States produces over 300 million tons of plastic a year, most of which is only used once and then thrown away, it is clear that pollution will become worse each year. It becomes even more shocking when this number is put in other terms; 300 million tons of plastic is comparable to the weight of all the adults living on the planet. By not
One of the main challenges that face the environment today is the threat of plastic materials in the environment. All forms and sizes of plastic are harmful to the environment; this paper looks at the effects of microplastics which are small forms of plastic that are at least 5mm in size. Due to their small size, the microplastics end up being ingested into the bodies of aquatic animals causing health consequences that are uncertain to the organisms. This review focuses on the susceptibility of marine organisms to the physical, chemical and biological uptake of microplastics.
Although plastic bags appear to be fragile and light, their negative environmental effect is devastating. Plastic bags may cause large amounts of pollution in every step of their limited life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials, production, transportation, and recycling or disposal. Plastic bags can be defined as the most damaging form of environmental pollution. They can have a damaging effect on marine animals and wildlife in addition to the aesthetic effects on beaches, parks, and trees. Plastic bags are potentially one of the main causes of death to marine animals (Harbor keepers,2008). Up to one hundred thousand marine animals or more die each year from eating plastic bags which are mistaken for food. This can result in blocking the animal’s intestines and possibly lead to the animal’s death. Another possible situation is that wildlife, such as birds, can get tangled in plastic bags causing choking and immobility, which may eventually lead to death. (Senior, 2008) and (Citizen Campaign, 2010). In other situations, after plastic bags photo degrade they remain toxic and could be eaten by fish, shellfish or any other marine life and survive this allows the toxins to enter our food chain through bioaccumulation (Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, 2011).
Renee Cho, a journalist for the State if the Planet, studied what occurs to all the plastic after consumers throw their plastic products out, "It's estimated that there are also hundreds of millions of plastic debris floating around in the oceans threatening the health and safety of marine life." Landfills are increasingly gaining size because of the amount of plastic we use to create out products as it is not biodegradable. Plastic can take more than one thousand years to degrade and can only be recycled through a lengthy expensive process. There also are large islands of plastic waste currently in our oceans, collected together by ocean gyres. Marine wildlife mistake these plastic products as food and ingest them, either killing or injuring themselves. The plastic pollution causes harm and endangers our
Given all the negative effects that come from plastic, why are people still participating in this poisonous cycle? Some claim that bottled water simply tastes better than water from the tap whether they prefer spring, purified, distilled, or mineral water. Most people just appreciate the convenience bottled water offers; it’s easier to carry little bottles that one can throw away instead of larger reusable bottles that need to be brought home at the end of the day. Also, bottled water comes in big “value packs” in most stores, which is beneficial for large group events and big families.