The Benefits Of Single Use Bottled Water

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Have you ever been driving in your car, saw your fuel tank was coming close to empty, and thought to yourself, maybe I should park and not drive around as much? Did you think twice about how easy it was to fuel your car with gas at the nearest gas station? Did you stop and think, maybe one day, there will not be enough gas available to fill my car? One way this will happen, is if we continue to buy bottled water. Energy, oil, and petroleum are all used in the production of single use bottled water. In 2011, it was estimated that the average American consumes approximately 29.2 gallons of bottled water a year (Holt 2012), and America is the world’s leading consumer of bottled water (Arnold and Larsen 2006). Bottled water needs to be produced, transported, and then stored. This long process requires a great deal of energy. Other sacrifices of energy include: branding and keeping the bottled water cold. 
 The phenomenon of single use bottled water is quite fascinating. People pay money for water, but really they are just paying for the plastic. Water is needed to survive, and surviving is a human right, so people are paying to acquire the human right to survive, when water is essentially free if you go to the nearest fountain or faucet. In the United States, there are more laws making sure tap water is safe to drink, than bottled water, and currently, bottled water is more expensive than gas by the gallon. About 40% of bottled water is just tap water, the other 60% of bottled water just has minerals added that have no proven health advantages. So, why pay for the plastic? Will air be harnessed in plastic next? (lol)
One could say that Nestle, The Cocoa Cola Company, and PepsiCo are geniuses. These companies are making a fortune...

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...s, which is less than one percent of the market today (Holt 2012). Energy and resources are too important to waste. The 32 to 54 million of barrels of oil per year used to make bottled water, can instead be used to fuel more than a million cars for a year. We need to change how we live now voluntarily, or we will be forced to change later in our lives. Some environmental issues are remote from our day to day lives, but bottled water is not. We can change this directly; we can stop buying single use bottled water. We can use reusable containers and fill them from water fountains. This change can be easy and painless, and it can be made if we have the will power to do so. Let’s exchange the minimal benefits bottled water gives us for resources that are nonrenewable. Buying bottled water has been our history since the late 1980’s, but it does not have to be our future.

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