Here are 7 reasons, although I’m sure you can think of many more not to drink bottled water:
1. Bottled water creates a lot of garbage.
Plastic is the most widely used material for bottling water around the world. You have to know that only one in four plastic bottles is recycled.
The rest of the plastic that is not recycled ends up in the seas, oceans, rivers and lakes, causing irreparable damage to many species of animals. I don’t know if you know Plastisfera, a marine ecosystem characterized by the presence of plastic waste in large ocean areas. A source of pollution with a terrible environmental destruction and almost impossible to recover.
Significantly reducing plastic packaging waste in this sector would reduce polluting and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the distribution and transport of bottles.
2. Its price is excessive.
The price of bottled water can be more than 1,000 times the price of tap water. Mexico is the country that consumes the most bottled water in the world, consuming 234 liters per person per year.
A liter of bottled water costs us up to 250 times more than a liter of tap water, that is, we pay for 5 liters of bottled water the same as for 1,000 liters of tap water.
3. It is not healthier than tap water.
Sometimes bottled water is no healthier than tap water. Some brands do not sell mineral water, they simply sell filtered tap water, which you can also do at home and much cheaper.
It is estimated that 40% of all bottled water in the world is taken from municipal water sources, come on, which is tap water.
As a consumer you cannot be certain that bottled water is the cleanest and safest to drink. I have even read articles that list a series of diseases that can cause this hair-raising habit.
4. Bottled water consumes a large amount of natural resources.
Making a bottle of water consumes three times the amount of water than the same water it will contain. Approximately 17 million barrels of oil are used for bottle production each year. Enough fuel for a million cars for a year.
A liter of bottled water requires 100 times more electricity than a liter of tap water.
5. Downplays supply utilities.
People who consume bottled water usually do so because they do not like the taste of local tap water or because they think it is healthier than tap water, or because they have doubts about its potability. The ideal would be to support and demand that our leaders improve tap water.
6. Drinking water is privatized.
Drinking water is an increasingly scarce resource. Multinationals have set their sights on “blue gold”. More and more public drinking water sources pass into private hands.
7. Your transportation consumes millions of liters of fuel.
An analysis showed that an ordinary citizen in Slovenia (whose average consumption of bottled water is 56 l/person in a year), who stops drinking bottled water and starts drinking tap water, would reduce his impact from drinking water by at least 36.81 kg of CO2 or 95% in four years. In addition, the GHG reduction potential was also calculated. What was surprising about the results was the discovery that a large part of the emissions originates from transport between the different suppliers.
After everything you have read, if you decide to try to give up plastic consumption, I advise you to follow the advice of Merren Tait, a girl who has completely abandoned plastic consumption.
How a plastic bottle is made.
Most plastics have their origin in Oil. The Bottles made from Oil, have a fairly long process from the time the crude oil is extracted until it ends up being a plastic bottle on the shelf of a store.
The manufacture of plastic follows a different process according to the product to be manufactured. In the case of water bottles, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is used, a product obtained from hydrocarbons. Once the PET resin is obtained, the industries obtain the final container by means of stretch-blow injection. In the entire process, the one that entails the most environmental loads is that of the purification of terephthalic acid, since it emits greenhouse gases.
Reuse of Bottles.
Plastic bottles are so abundant in our current society that ideas have arisen to reuse them of all kinds. From bird feeders, through plastic brooms, a homemade solar heater for the bravest, or a Christmas tree, a homemade watering can, or a surfboard!