The plastic water bottle market in the United States is worth billions of dollars annually. Plastic water bottles can be purchased just about everywhere, which makes them very convenient; however, there are many problems associated with them.
Facts About Plastic Water Bottles
1. Making water bottles in America uses about 17 million barrels of oil each year, and the tens of billions of plastic bottles produced are mostly not recycled.
2. About 20 billion plastic water bottles wind up in landfills each year or are incinerated.
3. Plastic is made from petroleum or natural gas, which are obviously fossil fuels, and both contribute a great deal to climate change.
4. Bottled water can cost hundreds or even sometimes thousands of times more than filtered water.
5. An analysis conducted by Consumer Reports found that bottled water use per person for one year could cost $346. If you bought that amount of bottled water for 10 years, the cost would be over $3,400.
6. In tests by the NRDC, about one-third of bottle water samples showed some contamination.
7. There are now millions of tons of plastic in the environment, including water bottles, so if you stop using them or reduce their use, fewer will wind up in places they should not be, like in rivers, lakes, and oceans.
8. Birds, mammals, and sea turtles sometimes ingest bottle caps they encounter in the wild, which leads to injury or death.
9. Twice as much water is used in the process of producing a plastic water bottle as is contained in the water bottle.
10. Making plastic water bottles produces millions of tons of CO2, which contributes to climate change.
11. Most bottled water is transported by truck, rail, or ship, so fossil fuels are burned to move it.
12. Some bottled water is tap water that has been put in a plastic bottle. Aquafina is one brand that has been identified in the press as sourced from tap water.
13. Water stored in plastic bottles for 10 weeks contained a chemical that could disrupt hormones in the human body.
14. Plastic water bottles take over 1,000 years to break down and incineration produces toxic fumes.
15. The equivalent of about 50 million barrels of oil is used for the processing, transport, and refrigeration of bottled water every year.
16. #1 polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE) bottles are safe only for one use. With additional uses they can leach chemicals into water that may be harmful to human health, such as DEHA, which might cause cancer, and benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), which might disrupt hormones.
17. Plastic water bottles release toxic chemicals when they decompose.
18. Over $100 billion is spent on bottled water every year globally, but most of that money is wasted because bottled water is not necessary when you have one of our filtration systems in your home.
19. Contaminants like benzene, mold, kerosene, tetrahydrofuran, fecal coliform and other bacteria, sanitizer, elevated choline, styrene, algae, and glass particles have all been found in bottled water. There are also recalls of this kind of water, though marketing campaigns try to make it seem natural, clean, and pure.
At PuraClean Water, we are committed to providing clean water and a healthy world, by making bottled water a thing of the past. In fact, when you become aware of the problems and how many there are, you may never buy another bottle of water again.