Isabel Balcezak, Eva Mullineaux, Marcie Gallagher

Behind The Bottle

Imagine a sea gull. It soars over the dunes and lands on a beach frequently trafficked by
tourists. There laying in the sand it sees a shiny object, which looks promising, like a small crab
even. The seagull pushes it around with its beak and then tosses it up, catches it, and swallows it
- or at least tries to. Unlike a crab, this object does not crush so easily, and gets caught in its
throat. The seagull chokes, and tries to rid itself of the bottle cap. Its too late, however, the
damage has been done, and this seagull cant recover. It dies there in the sand, another victim of
the plastic water bottle movement. Every year, millions and millions of people choose to forgo
countless other options and choose to purchase bottle after bottle of water. This choice threatens
many components of the ecosystem - marine wildlife to name only one. For this reason, it is vital
that we as a society ban the use and sale of disposable water bottles in order to improve the
environment in which we inhabit.
There are a few basic numbers that should make it quite obvious that tap water is very
preferential to bottled water. Firstly, the cost. First of all, Americans spent 11.8 billion dollars on
bottled water in the year 2012 alone. This means that bottled water costs about 7.50 cents/gallon.
Tap water only costs on average $0.004 a gallon, which is less than 1/300 the cost of bottled
water. To state this a different way, it is recommended to stay healthy that you drink eight glasses
of water a day, and at U.S. tap rates this is about
$.49 a year. If one were to drink only plastic bottles
for a year, this $.49 would turn into about $1400 per
year.
Another number worth mentioning is the amount of
waste used to manufacture and produce these water
bottles. It takes over 1.5 million barrels of oil to
manufacture water bottles every year. It also
estimated that between sterilizing and packaging, it
takes about 3 liters of water to package only 1 liter
bottle of water. This is incredibly wasteful
compared so the ease of simply using water that
comes from the tap. The power that we waste
making bottled water would theoretically be enough to power 190000 homes per year.
Bottles are unhealthy for countless reasons. Components used to make plastic are natural,
however dangerous in the wrong environment. Things such as cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt
and, of course, crude oil are examples of this. When bottles are disposed of incorrectly, these
elements go back into the environment in places that they can be harmful. For example, the oil
can seep out of the plastic when a bottle is disposed of in the ocean and be harmful to marine life
by making it difficult for fish and other sea creatures to breath. In humans, to say the least, the
PET in small doses can cause dizziness and depression, and in larger doses can cause nausea,
vomiting, and in extreme cases, death. In the graphic on the right, one can see the amount of PET
that has been wasted and recycled, and how significant the amount is that has been wasted and

put into our earth. Although each bottle is does not create an extraordinarily large amount of
these wastes, they add up. According to the Ocean Conservatory, plastic bottles and plastic bags
cover much of the ocean, specifically, every square mile of the ocean has over 46,000 pieces of
floating plastic in it. Humans around the world use 50 billion water bottles a year, of which only
20 percent end up being recycled (see image on previous page for picture taken by us of trash
cans in DC). This number is atrocious. The others
end up eventually in landfills or - even worse- at the
bottom of the ocean. These bottle biodegrade
eventually, however their components still end up in
the water. Plastic water bottles can also contain
organic pollutants such as BPA or PCBs. These take
much longer to disintegrate, while sitting in landfills
or at the bottom of the ocean. These landfills are all
across the US, and can contaminate the earth with
biogas and also prevent the land they inhabit from
being useful in any other way. There are thousands of
landfills across the US, as seen in the map below.
Plastic water bottles were first used for
commercial consumption in 1947. They were introduced to
most of the public, however, in the 1960s when polyethylene
was introduced and the prices of the water bottles dropped
significantly. Since
the, the use of
disposable water
bottles still
continues to grow
(seen in graph on
the next page
below)The water
was bought for
many reasons, the
most prominent of
those being
convenience. However, environmentalists began to realize that
these bottles also posed a threat to our eco system.
Water is so heavily regulated by our government and EPA
these days that tap water is just as healthy and nutritious as the water that comes from a Poland
Springs bottle. In fact, there are much fewer laws concerning the water that is bottled and the
water that comes out of your tap. In 1996, the Safe Drinking Water Act was put into motion,
which made it so that if the FDA does not use the new EPA tap water rules for its bottled water
within 180 days, the EPA standards will be required for Bottled water. However, the FDA could

easily get around these regulations by coming up with their own rules and regulations within the
given 180 days. Consequently, bottled water is less safe to drink due to its more relaxed
guidelines for water quality - not to mention what seeps into the water from the plastic in the
bottle before the water is actually consumed.
To summarize the above statements, the US public water, regulated by the EPA is tested
daily hundreds of times to make sure it's safe and healthy for public consumption. The FDA,
responsible for regulating bottled water, only requires weekly testing and is not required to share
its results with anybody.
The water bottle problem has many causes, both short term and long term. Short term
effects include things mentioned above such
as litter and pollution affecting wildlife and
marine life. Long term effects are also
dangerous and very real. Bottles used in
bottled water production take over 1,000
years to degrade and if incinerated, they
produce toxic fumes that break down the
atmosphere and cause major air pollution.
These effects cannot be cleaned up easily, but
if we stop selling water bottles now and stop
increasing their production, we can prevent
the worst of the damage. The plastic water
bottles also cause many health defects. As
stated previously, the chemicals in the bottle such as PET and BPA cause dementia, early onset
Alzheimers, and depression to simply name a few. Ban the Bottle now!!
The most drastic measure we can take to fix this is the banning of the bottle. However,
there are smaller things that the individual person can
do. Primarily, try to carry a reusable water bottle. Its
cheaper, cleaner, healthier, and often more convenient
when you need a refill. If you have no alternative to
using a disposable bottle, be sure to recycle it. Spread
the words, and help our cause! On the right, we can be
seen teaching students what to recycle and what not to
recycle. In addition to this, as our action, we
organized a campus-wide cleanup, where we picked
up trash and recycling around campus and also went
through trash and recycling bins to sort waste.

http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qbw.asp

http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/chap4.asp
Bottled Water (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qbw.asp
This source gives information by asking and answering questions. It is a good source because the
questions make effective headers, which makes the source easy to understand.
Gore, A. (2006). An inconvenient truth: The planetary emergency of global warming and
what we can do about it. New York: Rodale Press.
the photos and information in this book highlighted the danger of global climate change as well
as the negative effects of oil, which is used in the production of plastic water bottles.
Royte, E. (2008). Bottlemania: How water went on sale and why we bought it. New York:
Bloomsbury.
this book focused more on the sale of plastic water bottles and why they are so popular. It also
touched on ad campaigns and the famous people that encouraged the use of bottled water and
brought it into popular culture.
Fredericks, C. (2006). Water. Detroit, MI: Greenhaven Press.
This book focused on water regulation and health, and including the health of water in water
bottles versus tap water.
Prud'homme, A. (2011). The ripple effect: The fate of freshwater in the twenty-first
century. New York: Scribner.
The ripple effect dealt mainly with the potential lack of fresh water in the future, and what can be
done to prevent that.
Berners-Lee, M. (2011). How bad are bananas?: The carbon footprint of everything.
Vancouver: Greystone Books.
This book provides information for making environmentally friendly and carbon/ fossil fuelconserving choices in everyday life.
How plastic is made. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.plasticseurope.org/what-isplastic/how-plastic-is-made.aspx
Used to find out how plastic is made, and the environmental costs that it results in.
Bottle water is wasteful. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://thewaterproject.org/bottled_water_wasteful
This website gave several facts about the wasteful nature of the production and distribution of
plastic water bottles that we used in both our powerpoint and essay. It also touched on the cost of
manufacturing.
Plastic water bottles. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nrdc.org/thisgreenlife/0902.asp
This website talked about the safety of water bottles and the use of BPA. It talks about the history
of the use of BPA in plastic reusable water bottles and how it was phased out when BPA was
discovered to be toxic. This website talks about the dangers of reusable water bottles that are
advertised as not having any BPA because the polycarbonate that is used in its stead is not always
made public.

 Bottled water facts. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.banthebottle.net/bottled-waterfacts/

This website lists the facts about bottled water. It covers the concerns of using plastic water
bottles, the economic benefit of not using plastic water bottles, among other things.
Plastics, common wastes & materials. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/plastics.htm
This website talks about the process of making plastic and points out the dangers of using plastic
bottles that are inherent because of the process of making the polycarbonate.
Commercially bottled water. (2014, April 07). Retrieved from
http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/bottled/
This website talks about the possible biological problems that have and could arise from using
mass produced plastic water bottles.
What's the problem with plastic bottles? (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/whats-the-problem-with-plastic-bottles/
The negative effects of using plastic drinking bottles. (2014, January 28). Retrieved from
http://www.livestrong.com/article/183101-the-negative-effects-of-using-plastic-drinkingbottles/
Source describes negative effects of using plastic water bottles that include fossil fuels,
chemicals, and trash.
https://alinskytradition.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/consumption-graph.jpg
image
http://epoboost.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/bigstock-Water-Bottles-32298722.jpg
image
http://www.epa.gov/ghgreporting/images/ghgdata/landfills-map.gif
image
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/n08RCeDD0K8/TzB1zaIm8bI/AAAAAAAAABE/K3SjILjJ0YA/s320/Plastics-recyclinggraph.gif
image