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- A soccer player with one of our bottles
Did you know that Americans each drank an average of 218 bottles of water in 2007? bottles – 66 billion, in fact! Only 23% of them are recycled so on a daily basis, a staggering 140 million disposable plastic bottles go to landfills in the USA. That’s enough, laid end to end, to reach from New Jersey to China and back every day.
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- A soccer player with one of our bottles
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- bottled water bottles laid end to end from Xhina to the US
It doesn’t take an engineering degree to understand that this is a problem. It is extremely wasteful. To begin with, finite natural resources like water and oil are being consumed in the manufacturing of bottled water. It takes 4 ounces of oil and 51 ounces of water to make one 17 ounce bottle of water! Then after their use, 50 billion disposable plastic water bottles are dumped in landfills each year where they will take over 700 years to decompose.
There is a simple solution to this problem. Drink tap water instead of bottled water and use a reusable bottle when you are on-the-go. Even if you filter and flavor your tap water, you will save money because bottled water is 1000 times more expensive than tap water. There are many reusable bottles on the market today. For a high performance, high quality water bottle, try a stainless steel bottle from Back2Tap.
Oil consumption is one of the main concerns of the environmental “Green” movement. It is a valuable and finite natural resource. Over the course of one year, 17 million barrels of oil are wasted in the production of plastic water bottles. That same amount of oil could be used for much more necessary and productive reasons. For example, the oil used for one year of water bottle production could be used to fuel 1,000,000 cars for that same year. By utilizing Back2Tap’s reusable stainless steel water bottles, we can do our part to help conserve our oil supply for future generations.
The consumption of oil releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into Earth’s atmosphere and contributes to global warming. Power plants, cars, buildings, and factories release immense amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Driving a hybrid vehicle in one way to reduce both fuel consumption and harmful emissions. Surprisingly, water bottle production plants produce and release 2.5 million tons of unnecessary carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere every year. By using reusable stainless steel water bottles from Back2Tap, we can do our part to reduce the rate of global warming. These stainless steel water bottles serve the same environmental purpose as hybrid vehicles. They help to reduce the amount of oil consumed and the amount of harmful emissions released into the atmosphere.
It is commonly believed that most disposable plastic water bottles are recycled and reused. In fact, close to 80% of used water bottles end up in the trash that piles up in our landfills. By switching from bottled water to tap water, we can help reduce the number of plastic bottles that get tossed into the trash. On average, there are 137 million plastic bottles that get thrown into the trash every day. That is enough, laid end to end to reach China and back.
Back2Tap makes it easier to turn away from bottled water with their stainless steel reusable water bottles. Consider the number of water bottles that you have used in your life until this point. Now consider how many more water bottles you have the potential to use throughout the rest of your life. With the help of a stainless steel reusable water bottle, you can eliminate 100% of your future disposable plastic water bottle usage and do your part in helping rid the environment of the millions of plastic bottles that are dumped in our landfills every day.
Environmentalism is a social movement which strives to preserve our natural resources and influence people to take steps to minimize the damage that we inflict on the Earth every day. Almost every major industry (including automobile, airline, public service, and household product companies) has made changes to their operations in order to function in ways that are more “green”. Even some of the companies that produce bottled water have taken action to have less of an effect on the environment by using less plastic per bottle. However, the strongest impact on the environment does not stem from the corporations, but from the individual.
There are many misconceptions regarding the effects of drinking bottled water as opposed to tap water. Many people believe that it is healthier to drink bottled water than it is to drink tap water. This is not correct. Tap water is highly regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency whereas the production of bottled water is supervised by the Food and Drug Administration and is not subject to the strict regulations that tap water must satisfy. There is also a common false assumption that bottled water comes from mountain springs which makes it better regarding both taste and health, when almost half of the water than gets commercially bottled is simply filtered tap water. Many people prefer bottled water because it is flavored when, in actuality, filtering and flavoring tap water is easy and inexpensive compared to buying bottles of flavored water. Back2Tap’s stainless steel reusable water bottles offer the individual an opportunity to reduce his or her impact on the environment as well as save money by drinking tap water when on the go.
By chance, I recieved two articles reporting on bottled water bans in schools today – one about a Catholic school board in Canada and another about universities in the United States. The breadth of this bottled water backlash was impressive: both religious and secular, national and international, collegiate and primary/secondary, and coastal and heartland: Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic School District in Ontario, Canada, Washington University, Brandeis University, Evergreen State College in Washington, and the University of Arkansas.
This does not appear to be a regional fad that is going to fade. Increasingly, educational institutions are joining municipalities in rejection of bottled water and the extreme wastefulness and disconnection from nature that it symbolizes. Dramatic comments posted in opposition to these bans show how polarizing the issue can be and have sparked the following insights from my year of dedication to this pursuit.
Bottled water may not be the gravest problem in our midst and banning it may not be the best approach, but getting people back to drinking tap water is an important positive step toward sustainable living. It is essential for our survival on this planet to start questioning and changing our wasteful habits — drinking bottled water is just one small example of where we have gone wrong. It is an important but easy step people can take on the path to reducing their eco-footprints, but hardly the last. Once a person reduces their consumption of bottled water, they are likely to re-consider many of the other disposable convenience items they consume daily.
Most importantly, when we drink tap water, we are connnected with our environment. Suddenly, we are concerned about where our tap water comes from and what’s in it. We realize that we have to take care of our watershed because we are dependant on it. We tend to think we can live disconnected from nature or by conquering nature, but ultimately we can’t. Let’s get Back2Tap so that we consume fewer resources, reduce our waste and care for our watersheds.
As frugal as I am, I do not refill disposable plastic bottles. On rare occasions when I found myself stuck buying a bottle of water, I used to save the empty plastic bottle and reuse it. Not anymore. When I was researching reusable bottles last fall, I came across a Canadian study that had tested water bottles in a school and found that 13% had bacteria levels exceeding drinking water guidelines by the end of the school day. Worse than that, approximately 9% were found to have fecal coliforms. Ugh! Apparently, the children hadn’t washed their hands well before opening and closing the bottles. Even if hands are clean, there are bacteria in your mouth that will get into your drink. After sitting at room temperature all day on their desks, the bacteria had multiplied and the bottled water wasn’t too clean.
With all these germs, it is important to be able to get a bottle clean before reusing it. Disposable plastic bottles are made out of polyethylene terephthalate, PET or PETE for short. There will be a #1 in the plastic resin code triangle on the bottom. They are manufactured for a single use – the plastic is very thin and easily damaged so they are not designed to withstand washing or multiple uses. Getting them clean is also difficult because the top opening is very narrow. They never really get dry.
So recycle that disposable plastic bottle if you have to use one, or better yet, get yourself a reusable bottle like a stainless steel bottle with a wide-opening for easy cleaning!
The facts about bottled water usage and waste are staggering. In 2006, Americans drank an average of 167 bottles of water each for a total of 50 billion bottles or $15 billion spent. Of that total, only 23% was recycled. Roughly 38 billion disposable plastic water bottles end up in U.S. landfills each year – 100 million every day! That’s enough, laid end to end, to reach China and back each day.
It’s not just that they are filling up our landfills – it’s also the waste of resources. The amount of oil we use to produce water bottles, 17 million barrels, could fuel over 1,000,000 cars for an entire year. Picture a disposable water bottle 1/4 full with petroleum. That is how much oil it takes to make and distribute a single plastic bottle of water. One bottle also requires at least three bottles of water to make and distribute and generates about 120 grams of greenhouse gases – enough to fill 12 balloons.
Can we really afford to continue wasting our limited resources this way? There is an easy solution – drink tap water from a reusable bottle!
