Bottled vs. Tap: Recycling

The damage done from the bottled water industry does not only need to hurt our wallets, it can also affect the world that we live in. There are currently about 50 billion water bottles consumed every year and roughly 1,500 water bottles consumed PER SECOND in the United States.

Now, the majority of these bottles are currently made from petroleum, which if you didn’t already know, is oil. This oil is extracted and shipped to a facility where it is distilled to separate various hydrocarbons. Oil extraction has a number of environmental issues such as oil spills… sound familiar? After it has been extracted, tankers take it to refinery facilities where it is heated to separate gas, fuel, and plastics. Plastics are then mixed with multiple other chemicals to create what you know as a water bottle. Already sounding super environmentally friendly isn’t it?

Once the consumer has ended up with the bottle and finished it’s contents there are three possible scenarios as to where it can end up:

1. Reused
2. Recycled
3. Thrown away

First off, it is estimated that only 15-35% of plastic bottles make their way into recycling depots. This means that the rest of them are ending up in your local landfills as litter. Some water bottles are being reused for a short period of time however; plastic over time can become increasingly dangerous for consumers.

When you leave an opened water bottle sitting for too long you are allowing bacteria to build up inside the bottle. If you reuse the bottle, cracks and scratches inside start to collect bacteria as well. Now you might be thinking, that’s simple to fix I’ll just put it in the dishwasher! Well unfortunately most bottles cannot handle the extreme heat, actually doing the opposite and making a breeding ground for bacteria even bigger – yuck! Once a bottle has been opened you should not let it sit for more than 24 hours as bacteria has already started manifesting inside.

In 2002 a study was done at the University of Calgary. Researchers took 76 samples of water from water bottles of elementary students (some bottles were reused for as long as a month). What they found was absolutely disgusting! Nearly two-thirds of the samples had bacterial levels that exceeded that of drinking water guidelines and could be harmful to humans causing mild food poisoning.

So are you still hooked on the bottled water movement or do you think you might be willing to kick that habit?

– K