After Professor Trumpey's lectures, you are well aware of the alternatives to using disposable bottles and hopefully are recycling the ones you do.
The advent of bottled water has sent our already wasteful consumer culture into pollution overdrive and it’s a tremendous task to put the brakes on the momentum of this waste.
Here is a list of plastic bottle fun facts that put the magnitude of this pollution into scope (from the green up-grader)
* Plastic bottles take 700 years to begin composting
* 90% of the cost of bottled water is due to the bottle itself
* 80% of plastic bottles are not recycled
* 38 million plastic bottles go to the dump per year in America from bottled water
not including soda
* 24 million gallons of oil are needed to produce a billion plastic bottles
* The average American consumes 167 bottles of water a year
* Bottling and shipping water is the least energy efficient method ever used to
supply water
* Bottled water is the second most popular beverage in the United States
Although it can be easy and convenient to pick up bottle beverage products the end cost to the environment is staggering. So be mindful when you drink… and remember, friends don’t let friends drink from disposables!
Quick tips:
Buy a stainless steel water container.
Check out SIGG
Reuse Glass bottles (such as Lipton's)and fill with your own beverage
10 comments:
I have never really seen the practicality of using disposable water bottles. I don’t drink nearly as much water as I should, so if I ever have a water bottle I take a few sips and end up leaving it lying around somewhere. What a waste! Then a few years ago I bought a reusable water bottle for a canoe trip I was going on. Ever since then it has been far easier to just refill my water bottle and go. My brother, however, is still a dedicated disposable water bottle user. The last time I was home and needed to borrow the car, it was littered with empty plastic containers. I plan on getting him a reusable water bottle for Christmas, in the hopes that he’ll save the world’s landfills from a few hundred extra bottles.
The first fact listed was absolutely astounding! 700 years for a bottle to start decomposing... and yet approximately 38,000,000 are thrown in landfills each year. That is sickening. My entire family are big soda drinkers, and my sister in particular, does not recycle at all...
I checked out SIGG's website and picked out a container for each of my family members in hopes that it will, even subtly, change their "eco- lifestyle". It's strange to me how something so small as getting a reusable container could make such a dramatic difference. However, I did have a hard time believing some of the statistics shown. If the average American drinks 167 bottles of water per year and only 20% are recycled, that means that about 133 bottles per person, per year go into a landfill. If there are 300,000,000 people in U.S. that would mean approximately 40 billion bottles go into landfills, not 38 million. If 38 million bottles go into landfills a year, that would mean that on average each American throws away only 7 bottles of water... That is a large spectrum to go off from to find complete facts. Not trying to be technical, the numbers just seems odd to me.
It seems as though our society needs to benefit in some way to do something good. Take soda cans for example, we get 10 cents back per can for recycling. Why do we not do the same for water bottles? It would give much more incentive for people to recycle more often...
I remember about a year ago on Digg.com there came up pictures of what was titled a 'floating plastic mass' in the Pacific.
I was shocked to see it initially. It's in Oceania where many different current streams cross one another. Typically these streams carry debris around and it ends up on the sea floor or some foreign shore. When they cross one another, the material collects and has formed something now know as the Eastern Garbage Patch.
Essentially, it's this huge swath of plastic bottles, bags, and junk that is roughly the size of Texas and kills countless numbers of animals each year. Horrible, is an understatement once you see it.
How similar of plights we face with the horror of the plastic water bottle and the abominable waste of paper and plastic bags. Both are objects that have been brought into existence by consumerism, and both a completely unnecessary by standards of reasonable living.
With a myriad of other available means of obtaining water, such as water fountains and tap and resusable water bottles, there hardly seems an excuse for this wasteful behavior. But I do wonder about the resources used to make the fairly heavy-duty reusable water bottles like Nalgenes and Camelbaks. What would their plastic bottle equivalents be? How long do those take to decompose in garbage heaps? I think that should also be a factor in deciding how best to be eco-savvy about water consumption.
I am almost ashamed to admit that I am a recovering plastic bottle addict. I was easily taken in by the convenience of water bottles. It was so nice to have water on hand when I needed it and an easy container to grab as I ran out the door. My roommate and I would go through cases and cases of water bottles last year. We laughed at our “water dome” of stacked water bottles in our room and almost always had it on hand. We ALWAYS recycled the bottles but now that I think back on it it’s crazy that we went through so many one-use containers. One guy in our hallway truly recycled his plastic bottles by refilling them with water. We tried to talk him out of this, explaining that the plastic leeches chemicals into the water after awhile.
This year I am happy to say I moved away from using plastic water bottles so frequently. I bought one case of water bottles at the start of the semester but literally just finished them and have no intention of buying more. Mostly I was worried by the idea of intaking chemicals leeched by the plastic, but now that I am more aware of the oil cost and inability to decompose I find myself even more willing to cut way back on my water bottle use. I recently bought a klean kanteen stainless steel reusable water container so that I could stop my water bottle use altogether. I had used glass bottles from Snapple and Nantucket Nectar drinks for awhile but those were piling up and after a few uses I would just recycle those too. It does take a little more effort to make sure it’s filled up and there when I want it, but I feel it is well worth it!
Like Betsy Peters, I also intend to gift a plastic bottle using friend of mine with a reusable water container. It’s great to see them around campus! It shows that at least a decent amount of people care enough to change their daily habits. I also seem to recall hearing about a city that completely banned water bottles this past summer. I think if people understood more the cost that went in to plastic water bottles and the horrible amount of waste it produced and it’s potential to leech chemicals, I think they would be quick to find better alternatives.
I remember an old basketball coach of mine could swear he could taste the differences between the different brands of bottled water. I can only imagine how many bottles of water he had to drink for him to get to this conclusion, and how many of those bottles he recycled. That had me think about other plastic containers such as individual yogurt containers, spread able butter, the adorable honey bears. What percentage of those gets recycled? And why are Americans so fixed on the idea of a disposable life style?
I think most people are unaware of the damaging effects of not recycling. Throwing away just one bottle here, and another there; it really adds up. If we continue thinking like this, and not taking the extra time and effort to recycle everything, our landfills will fill up, and more of the environment will be used up to hold our trash. Not only is it terrible to not recycle, but when we dont recycle, it takes 700 years for plastic to start biodegrading. So everytime you throw away a plastic bottle, it gets lost in a landfill and sits in the enviroment for much longer than your lifetime. It is not fair to other people, animals, and the environment as a whole to be so lazy and inconsiderate. It is not hard to have a recycle bin and drop off the recycleables once a week. People complain about not having time, but it really is not that hard and taking a little time out of your schedule to recycle would be a huge help to the environment. Everyone needs to start recycling more or the environment will collapse. It will be polluted so much, and we cant wait until that point for people to realize how important recycling is. The green movement is growing fast, and hopefully recycling will be taken more seriously.
I used to buy a lot of plastic water bottles in bulk. It was very convenient to have water bottles constantly handy. I also used to throw away many of my bottles which I really regret now. I recently bought a Brita water pitcher and am wasting a lot less as a result. The water pitcher not only helps clean up the environment but also saves money as well. It is amazing to me to see how many bottles are thrown in garbage cans when recycling bins are right next to it. I definitely am guilty of doing this and am trying to be more conscious of disposing of these bottles in the best way. It is shocking that 80% of water bottles are not recycled. Another negative aspect is that bottle caps are recyclable and end up in our water sources. I plan on finding a water bottle that is durable and reusable. If we can start cutting down on the amount of plastic we put out there, we are taking steps to a cleaner environment.
I will admit I use to drink from a plastic water bottle, but I am proud to say that I am an owner of a SIGG water bottle and use it everyday.
Thinking about it, it made no sense to constantly change water bottles. I would often refill my plastic water bottle or lose it and just get another one. Most of the time I would forget about them and leave them lying around and just go grab. another. I would have no idea if they would end up in the trash or the recycling bin, unless I put them there. Now owning a SIGG, I am more mindful of where I leave it because I do not want to lose it. The day I stopped using plastic water bottles is the day I drank moldy water. It was disgusting. I am not sure how it happened, but apparently at the moment I was quite absent minded. It was a plastic water bottle that I kept refilling. I basically drank the whole thing except the last few sips. When I went to continue drinking I noticed something floating in my water bottle. I thought possibly (as gross as it is) that it might be food. I took a closer look and saw black floating objects in my water bottle. My uncle then took a closer look and told me it was either some mold or bacteria floating in my water bottle. I was quite disgusted. Ever since then I have refused to use plastic water bottles.
I will also like to mention that because of this incident I have convinced others to stop drinking from plastic water bottles and switch to a reusable bottle.
This class has opened my eyes to recycling and the amount of energy it takes to not recycle. I have learned that the bottle caps are not recyclable yet and that plastic is not biodegradable. It just degrades so the plastic never leaves the environment.
I had an interesting experience this summer with a housemate of mine who insisted on drinking from bottled water. He said "tap water could have germs in it." It was a classic germaphobe situation. And I couldn't convince him to at least use filtered water and a reusable (PBA free) water bottle. He was obdurate about his bottled water. What could I do to change his habits? Bottled water is AMAZINGLY wasteful. I usually don't like to use this when I'm writing academically, but it is STUPID to drink bottled water. What was even more frustrating was that my housemate did not recycle his water bottles. The irony is that what makes our country so great is what allows us to destroy the environment. After all, the United States is a free country, and there are no laws against disposable water bottles or against someone not recycling. So, I feel like I am writing and saying this a lot for this class, but the idea I always come to is this: don't try to change consumer habits, try to change producer habits. If the water bottles we produced were disposable and biodegradable, would that help? What if the water bottles had some other value? Basically, I can't think of any way to change my housemate's behavior, so why try. Focus on something else.
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