Effects Of Plastic Pollution On Marine Environment

Imagine you are swimming in a lake full of plastic bottles. In some cases, this is true. The use of bottled water is killing the environment. It is affecting your health. Nonrenewable resources are being wasted, and a lot of money is going towards bottled water when it can be used for other purposes. Clearly, manufacturers should not be allowed to sell bottled water.

Plastic is the number one threat to our marine ecosystem. There’s an area in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas that is composed of plastic. Studies show that 92% of dead sea birds have ingested plastic up to 5% of their body weight(www.householdmag.com). One thousand five hundred plastic bottles end up as waste in landfills or thrown into the ocean every second. Thirty-eight million plastic bottles go to a landfill each year. 80% of plastic bottles never get recycled. Water bottle garbage is a primary source of pollution. Bottled water uses fossil fuels, which contributes to global warming and causes pollution. Making bottled water produces millions of tons of carbon dioxide. More than one hundred million plastic bottles are used by humans daily. Plastic bottles require up to 700 years to dissolve. 

Most bottled water is sold in plastic, number one; plastic number one is polyethylene terephthalate(PET). PET may be an endocrine disruptor. That is altering our hormonal systems. Antimony can cause dizziness, depression, and death.  Antimony can be found in PET plastic bottles. Although plastic number one is bisphenol A (BPA) free, phthalates in bottles can still seep into your water. BPA exposure can cause fertility issues, altered brain development, cancer, diabetes, and heart complications. Research from the State University of New York analyzed 259 bottles from 19 locations in 9 countries in 11 different brands and found, the levels of plastic fibers in bottled water were double those found in tap water in a previous study. Bottled water is not  "safer" than tap water. In the United States, tap water is continuously monitored and treated. Tap water supplies must do testing to show contamination levels. If tap water is unsafe, they have to tell the public. It is not mandatory for bottled water corporations to conduct lab tests. Bottled water contains 50% more microplastics than tap water. Microplastics are 93% of bottled water. Three hundred twenty-five microplastics are found per liter of bottled water. 

The energy used to manufacture bottled water can power 190,000 homes. Twenty-four million liters of oil are needed to produce billions of bottled water. More than 17 million oil barrels must make enough plastic water bottles to meet America’s annual demand for bottled water. Three liters of water are used for packaging one bottle of water. 86% of bottled water becomes garbage.

The average human consumes 167 bottles of water per year. 90% of the cost of bottled water is the bottle itself. 3000% more expensive than tap water. $0.02 per gallon spent on tap water. $0.64 per gallon spent on bottled water. Bottled water is thousands of times more expensive than tap water.