Plastic Bottle Waste Continues To Plague Our Environment

Plastic bottle pollution is not going away anytime soon.  Rick Allen, CEO of Pure Elements Water, has been talking about this issue for years.  He wrote this article in 2009 about the plastic bottle problem and offered ways to try and fix it.

You Choose – Do We Really Need So Many Plastic Bottles Clogging Our Earth and Our Bodies?

PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic bottles have come to the forefront of our consciousness lately for two reasons – we are casually covering the surface of our planet with them in landfills even though it takes 700 years for them to start to decompose, and we are increasing the possibility of health issues by consuming water stored in them. Only one in five plastic water bottles are ultimately recycled, resulting in the rest traveling to the landfills. Why is this happening?
The environmental and health issues associated with the production and use of plastic bottles deserve our attention. Sales of bottled water, driven by intensive marketing campaigns from big players like C-Cola (Dasani), Pepsi (Aquafina) and Nestle, increased at a rate of 8.9 percent last year. This year Americans will spend a staggering 16 billion dollars on bottled water. We should also note that tap water can have off tastes and odors while still being healthy, so taste is another reason for the success of bottled water in the US.
The numbers are unbelievable – each year we put 38 billion plastic water bottles into landfills, and the number is growing. That is 38 billion with a “B”! And with a half-life (half the time it takes a plastic bottle to decompose completely) of up to 1,000 years, these bottles aren’t going to just go away in our lifetimes, or those of our kids, or even those of our grandchildren.

Update: *Rick Allen originally published the this article in 2009 on Ezinearticles. Since 2009, the problem has gotten worse at an alarming rate. Bottled water sales have increased 7.9% over the last year and 7% the year before. That’s 2015 and 2014. We have nearly 45 billion bottles going into the landfills every year. We are buying bottled water at a rate of about 1.7 billion bottles per week in the US.

Let’s look at these key questions:
1) Do we really need to buy bottled water? Well, only if we believe what we are told in the marketing campaigns. The US is the largest bottled water market in the world, but are we getting what we are paying for? Numerous studies over the past decade have compared tap water to bottled and found no difference, or in the case of this recent study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) the findings suggest that tap water can actually be better in quality! So the level of necessity depends on your tolerance for the alternatives – Drink tap water; get your water from flavored beverages; or filter your water at home with a quality whole-house or undercounter system.
Read Rick’s entire original article here: http://EzineArticles.com/2073103

Find out more about how our filtration system eliminates the need to buy plastic water bottles: http://pureelementswater.com/custom-filters.html
Update: *Rick Allen originally published the this article in 2009 on Ezinearticles. Since 2009, the problem has gotten worse at an alarming rate. Bottled water sales have increased 7.9% over the last year and 7% the year before. That’s 2015 and 14. We have nearly 45 billion bottles going into the landfills every year. We are buying bottled water at a rate of about 1.7 billion bottles per week in the US.
Check out the video below.  It is an excellent explanation of why plastic water bottles are so hazardous to the environment.  While recycling is good, limiting or eliminating plastic bottle use is also critical to reversing this pollution.
https://youtu.be/_6xlNyWPpB8

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