Effects Of Water Bottles On The Environment – There’s no doubt about it: we live in a thirsty world. Even though the United States has access to an amazing water source, residents and visitors still turn to disposable plastic bottled water. Yes, it is recommended to store some in case of emergency such as natural disasters; However, the vast majority of the time disposable water bottles are purchased for drinking throughout normal daily life. Although disposable water bottles can be very convenient, this convenience comes at a high cost. Disposable water bottles not only contain harmful chemicals like BPA that are harmful to your health, but they also have a very negative impact on the environment.

As you can see, the production of disposable water bottles has already caused a great deal of damage because 90% of the cost of bottled water comes from making the bottle.

Effects Of Water Bottles On The Environment

“The bottled water industry correctly, but misleadingly, says that the plastic the water comes in is recyclable,” says Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute. “It’s misleading because…

Ocean Plastics Pollution

Mixed messages have been sent over the years regarding recycling. The popular phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle” is in that order for a reason. If we treat “reduction” as our first choice and reduce our use of recyclables as a whole, that in itself will have a significant impact. We are so accustomed to the fact that there are so many recycling options now that we do not stop to think about how much recyclable materials affect the environment when they are made by themselves.

Office H20 is committed to reducing the carbon footprint of plastic bottles and 5-gallon bottles with an environmentally friendly and cost-effective alternative. By offering bottleless water systems, we are part of the plan to eliminate single-use plastic water bottles, along with all their problems, by using the latest water filtration and purification technologies.

By switching to bottles, we can reduce the number of carbon emissions entering our atmosphere, and while making our planet greener, you’ll also be saving some other valuable green items. Are you interested in better-tasting drinking water without the negative impact of disposable water bottles and 5-gallon jugs? Call us at (866) 621-6910. Ocean pollution represents a massive environmental crisis. It may seem overwhelming, but the problem can be broken down into small tasks that everyone can contribute to.

A gray triggerfish (Balistes capriscus) studies a plastic bottle that has drifted into the ocean. Plastic bottles like these do not biodegrade and will remain in the ocean for hundreds of years.

Pollution: Facts, Causes, Effects On Economy

We’ve all seen the images: birds nesting in piles of trash along the beach, fish caught in discarded nets, and huge mosaics of debris floating in the ocean. What is even more disturbing is that what we see in these poignant images is only part of the problem. Nearly half of plastic pollution is submerged beneath the ocean’s surface, most of it in the form of plastic particles so small that we may never be able to clean them all up.

To get over the enormity of the ocean pollution crisis, one approach is to focus on something recognizable in these images of debris. Select something you’ve personally used that may have ended up in the ocean, perhaps a water bottle. Find one in the picture and ask yourself, how did it get there?

Plastic is a man-made synthetic material that was first discovered over a hundred years ago but did not enter the public domain on a large scale until the 1950s. Although plastics are currently the leading cause of ocean pollution, they are not inherently harmful to humans or the environment. In fact, in a UN report on combating the negative impacts of plastics, UNEP head Erik Solheim made a point of acknowledging that plastic is in fact a “miracle material.”

“Thanks to plastics, countless lives have been saved in the health sector, the growth of clean energy from wind turbines and solar panels has been greatly facilitated, and the safe storage of food has been revolutionized,” Solheim wrote in his introduction. However, plastic bottles are one of the most common items within marine debris. How did this promising material become a symbol of the desecration of the human environment?

Why We Should Not Reuse Plastic Water Bottles

Plastic bottles are single-use plastic, a product designed to be used only once and then discarded. Single-use plastics also include plastic packaging, for example meat and fresh produce, which accounts for almost half of all plastic pollution. This type of plastic product is different from multi-use plastics, which can also pollute the ocean, but they tend to accumulate less due to their multi-use nature.

For example, refillable bottles can store water in a way that doesn’t produce the frequent waste of a single-use plastic water bottle. Refillable bottles can be made from many materials, including plastic, but they last much longer than a single-use bottle and can be recycled when they become old or damaged. For both types of bottles, how they are disposed of determines their final resting place and whether they become ocean pollutants.

A single-use plastic water bottle was manufactured, filled with water, and likely taken to a store, where it sat on a shelf waiting for a thirsty buyer. Many of us drink from plastic bottles several times during an average day, week, or month. Once that’s done, we have the option to leave that bottle:

Multi-use plastic bottles experience these same paths at the end of their life, but of course this happens less often as they can be used multiple times.

One Bottle At A Time

National Geographic Explorer Heather J. Coldew is empowering communities around the world to participate in solving the ocean pollution crisis from single-use plastics through increased individual action – including a campaign called One Less, which encourages people to stop using single-use plastic water bottles altogether. One Less is currently based and focused on London, England, but anyone can choose to use a less disposable bottle.

Once in the ocean, the single or multi-use bottle moves with the wind and ocean currents as it encounters the elements. Plastic can take hundreds of years to decompose into microplastics, giving it plenty of time to sail the seas. After a certain period of time, much of the debris coming from the coast will have encountered an ocean gyre, a large system of rotating currents. The Pacific Garbage Patch, a widely known icon of ocean pollution, is located within one of these gyres.

National Geographic explorer Jenna Romnes Jambeck described the movement of plastics in such ocean gyres. Her work has influenced testimony before the US Congress and inspired discussions at the United Nations on policies that might help mitigate the marine debris crisis. She also co-developed an app to encourage public participation in identifying and cleaning up marine debris, including plastics, enabling citizen science solutions at the grassroots level.

Which provides details about the amount of plastic making its way into the ocean. Jambeck noted in this publication that the quality of waste management within a country greatly affects its contribution to marine pollution. As an immediate measure to combat marine pollution, Jambeck and her colleagues suggest that industrialized countries address the increasing use of single-use plastics. According to a 2018 United Nations report, 60 countries have passed such regulations to limit the use of plastic bags and polystyrene foam products (commonly known as Styrofoam).

Glass Bottles Have A Larger Environmental Impact Than Plastic Bottles Study

Hopefully, future government and societal solutions to ocean pollution will move toward ending the crisis. In the meantime, individuals can participate in citizen science initiatives like Jambeck’s Marine Debris Tracker and make smart choices about how they use and dispose of plastics, especially the single-use items that dominate marine debris.

US Fish and Wildlife Service: Oceans of Trash Featured Article Single-use Plastics: A Roadmap to Sustainability UNEP: Plastic Planet: How Microplastics Are Polluting Our Soils National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: Can Marine Debris Spontaneously Decompose in the environment? Enter the factsEvidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic NOAA: How big is the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’? Science vs. Response to Myth Institute for the History of Science: The History and Future of Plastics Scientific Progress: The Production, Use, and Fate of All Plastics Ever Manufactured Research Article

EPA: Toxic Threats of Plastic Webpage EPA: Aquatic Waste Movement Webpage NOAA: A Guide to Plastics in the Ocean Webpage

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The Negative Environmental Impact Of Bottled Water

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