Plastic Water Bottles: Harming Your Health And The Environment
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Water bottles are everywhere. People buy them because they’re easy and convenient. They can just carry their water with them wherever they go, and they don’t have to worry about a can of something getting knocked over and spilled. Plus, water is healthy for you. Unfortunately, water bottles are not healthy for the environment. They fill up landfills faster than any other type of debris, and can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade in a landfill.
A large part of this problem can be resolved if more people chose to recycle. When they avoid recycling, it’s sometimes because they’re lazy and (more often) sometimes because the area in which they live doesn’t have a good recycling program that they can use. That makes recyclers angry, because they know that there’s a lot more that can be done.
There are better things that you can do with your plastic water bottles than allowing them to just end up in a landfill. There are companies who are actually doing something with all this trash, if they can just get consumers and communities to get it to them.
For example, there is a company who is now making sand play sets – pail, shovel, rake, and castle mold, from recycled plastic milk jugs. They aren’t water bottles, but the premise is the same. These sand play sets look good, hold up well, and can be bought online or through some major retailers.
If you’re worried about environmental harm, you can take steps to stop contributing to it. Use a water filtration system instead of water bottles. If you are on the go and need a water bottle, reuse one that you have already purchased. If you insist on using water bottles, at the very least, recycle them. Every little bit you do helps the planet.
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Since we can’t always use sustainable materials it’s important to reuse materials in creative ways. I like turning my plastic water bottles into giant earrings. They’re pretty heavy and my ears hurt, buy at least my footprint is smaller.
Part of the problem is that the recommendation to drink all that water is bleeping marketing – there’s no reason to be gulping down 8 glasses a day just for the sake of it: http://www.webmd.com/diet/guide/wonders-of-water and http://www.webmd.com/news/20080402/health-benefits-of-water-oversold
both talk abut how 8 glasses of water a day is an urban myth.
It’s worse that that – it’s marketing, from Pepsi and Coke. They make 1000 times the profit margin on water that they do on sodas, so of course they’re going to go out of their way to make you drink more of it, but there’s no point, three-quarters of the water you need you get from your food, and the rest you drink from the tap when you’re thirsty.