Advocacy Issues > Environment > Single-Use Plastic > Plastic Water Bottles

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Convenience and the Plastic Water Bottle:
Why This Single-Use Has Got to Go
By ANGELA ZHANG 11:59 PM ET 16 April 2014


How ironic is it to know water bottles pollutes the ocean, amongst other things?

The plastic water bottles function short lived, disposable, and kind of depressing. It has
introduced numerous ways to make us and the things around us die faster, ramifications which
we can't seem to cast aside as easily as the thing itself. While statistics dont fail to illustrate the
rippling impact of single-use plastic water bottles, the allure of buying a pack of twenty-four for
the car trip goes beyond whether the consumer understands these effects to the embedded
consumer culture that makes these wasteful practices acceptable and chic.
From the beginning -- if you aren't particularly concerned about the notion of devouring up
natural resources -- the water bottle is useful for guzzling the crude oil, namely petroleum,
needed to produce it. The oil's extraction and refinement process releases greenhouse gases that
help spur along global warming and toxins, adding to one of the many ways it contributes to
pollution. One year seventeen million barrels of oil was needed for American demand, and this
doesn't include transportation energy: it takes another fifty million barrels to do the rest like
pump, process, transport, and refrigerate. If you imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way
up with oil, you've got how much it takes to bring it out of the factory and onto the shelves.
Every ton of PET plastic produces three tons of carbon dioxide as well, and it doesn't help that
many water bottles are made from said PET. Quite ironically, the water bottle uses about three
times as much water as it holds to be produced, most of which cannot be used for much else
because of chemical contamination. Buyers are blind to this process, typically aware of the only
the effects of the later discarded plastic -- however what goes on behind the scenes are just as
bad.
It's evident in the production process itself that the carbon dioxide emissions are a red flag for
greenhouse gasses and the big word, global warming. Plastic itself is another indicator that these
single-use water bottles arent earth-friendly, and the fact that only 23% of the bottles are
actually recycled with the remaining two million tons ending up in landfills means especially for
Americans, who are 60% of the world's plastic bottle consumers using them at a rate of fifty
million bottles a year, we need to find alternatives to keep these bottles out of our environment.
Plastic has BPA -- one of the reasons people are advised not to reuse plastic water bottles is
because the wear and tear releases more of this chemical -- but since we can't help if the plastics
break into smaller pieces when we release them into the wild, this means wherever they travel,
areas ranging from the middle of the Pacific Ocean forming the infamous Pacific Ocean Garbage
Patch to the stomachs of animals happening to live in said oceans, increasing the amount of
plastic waste isn't helping the pollution problem.
Thankfully the notion that plastic can't decompose for centuries isn't true if you expose it to UV
rays, i.e. the sun, and Japanese researchers from Nihon University in 2009 discovered this
process can be as fast as one year for plastics in warm ocean water as long as you don't mind the
fact this also means the small pieces of plastic still have the harmful BPA chemical, and as they
break into smaller pieces release more BPA to effectively pollute the very waters they are in.
And you can't exactly rely on the two million ton bottle landfill to decompose that fast because
waste in landfills cant get that sunlight; nor can bacteria, which typically breaks down most
other waste, do anything to speed this process along.
BPA harms the marine life and birds, and animals whether on land or in the sea choke on the
small pieces of plastic. The fish we eat comes from this kind of contamination; our water sources
aren't getting any better either. BPA is also especially good for increasing risks of certain types
of cancers, birth defects, and lowering testosterone levels in people. Many plastic water bottles
are made from the BPA-rich PET so it's particularly useful if you want to get some into your
system after your soccer game or during a hiking trip. As an endocrine disruptor as well as a
mimicker of estrogen, our body is at risk as even small estrogen level changes affect our body's
cells.
There are corn-based alternatives called PLA (polylactic acid), but don't be fooled by the
biodegradable and earth-friendly pitch. For one, the rate of biodegradability for PLA plastics,
just as for PET plastics, depends on the conditions, and isn't the most surefire solution to
decreasing the piles of plastic shrapnel. If subjected to an industrial composting facility where
digestive microbes and 140 degrees Fahrenheit do the job, sure, a nice three months is about all
it'll take to decompose. Otherwise you'd be waiting for as much as a thousand years for this to
happen in a landfill, a comparable time to other plastics. And it still takes transportation
resources to get the bottles where they need to go. Being made of plant doesn't exempt it from
needing to ironically be cleaned with water either, once again a process needing three times the
volume of the bottle itself.
Other "earth-friendly" attempts such as using less plastic or claiming to be made of X percent of
recycled plastic, while satiates some superficial desire to be environmentally aware, continues to
feed consumer desire for the convenience of single-use plastic bottles and do not solve the
inherent issues of such goods -- the wasteful habits of disposable products that contribute to the
environmental and health damages cannot be effectively solved at the level of reforming the
product itself. Reforming the way we view the possibilities of plastics would be the most ideal
and also hardest place to start. Despite the adverse health effects of plastic, overreliance on
essential resources such as fossil fuels, and environmental harm, the convenience factor makes it
hard for people to let go.
San Francisco's gutsy move to ban sales of plastic water bottle is a nod towards the green
movement. It has even greater implications for how its residents will adapt their move away from
relying on the single-use, single-serve plastics that have become an essential in excessive
consumer culture. Concord, Massachusetts and several national parks have already banned water
bottle sales. While some proponents of the industry like the American Beverage Associate try to
downplay the environmental impacts, claiming these bottles "are not being thrown awayThey
are being recycled -- yes, 23% of them, mind you -- these statements fail to regard the wasteful
habits inherent to single-use products beyond the plastic water bottle.
The increasing demand for a handy sip has led to ignorance concerning disposability. Simply
knowing about the negative impacts aren't enough to combat the fatal attraction to the
accessibility of the moment, where a water bottle is only a two second hand motion away from
your bag versus the thirty second walk to the water fountain. To move away from the plastic
water bottle to healthier alternatives, including using glass or metal bottles, are more sustainable
habits that have to first cross the hurdle of a culture already accustomed to an age of convenience.
Bottles, along with other single-use products such as the plastic bag, utensils, and packaging
materials, are a part of mainstream consumer culture -- filtering it out of our system could be
harder than tap.










Works Cited
Harris, William. "How long does it take for plastics to biodegrade?" HowStuffWorks.
HowStuffWorks, 25 Dec. 2010. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
Horton, Jennifer. "What's BPA, and do I really need a new water bottle?" HowStuffWorks.
HowStuffWorks, 9 Jul. 2008. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.
"Reusing Plastic Bottles Can Pose Serious Health Hazards." The Environmental Magazine. The
Environmental Magazine, n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2014.
Schriever, Norm. "Plastic Water Bottles Causing Flood of Harm to Our Environment. The
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 29 Jul. 2013. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.
Timm, Jane C. "San Francisco bans sale of plastic water bottles on city property." MSNBC.
MSNBC, 3 Mar. 2014. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
West, Larry. "Pros and Cons of the Corn-based Plastic PLA." The Environmental Magazine. The
Environmental Magazine, n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2014.
Wright, Loveday. "Life cycle of a plastic water bottle." DW Akademie. Deutcsche Welle, 1 Jul.
2014. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.