subject: Reasons Why Everyone Should Avoid Bottled Water [print this page] Water is our most precious resource, we literally cannot live without out it. The past few decades has seen an incredible rise in the consumption of sodas and sugary fruit drinks that we know are harmful to us and helps to cause or exacerbate serious health problem like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity. More recently we have witnessed a massive explosion in the availability and consumption of bottled waters.
This has happened for several reasons but chief among them is our move to fast-paced " on the go" lifestyle that demands convenience and portability and the idea that we need to consume ever more products to help keep the economy churning and moving forward but that also lends itself to the creation of massive amounts of waste from the consumption of these disposable products. While the waste created from bottled waters should of primary concern there are other dangers here as well.
In the US over 2.5 million water bottles are thrown away every HOUR! That is correct, every hour. And that is only for the US, if you included the entire planet I am sure it would be in the tens of millions. And only a small percentage of these bottles are disposed of properly so that means the majority will help fill up landfills or possibly add to the ever growing plastic vortex in the Pacific Ocean.
Drinking water from plastic bottles also exposes you to very harmful chemicals that are leaching into your body. Most plastic bottles contain a toxin known as BPA which studies have shown causes a myriad of health problems and can wreck havoc on hormone levels. "According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Americans spend approximately 4 billion dollars a year on bottled water. That money goes into the pockets of the very companies that also try to hook people on soft drinks containing caffeine, sugar, and other potentially harmful additives". Do you really want your hard earned money going to companies that are profiting off of selling products to us that are knowingly harmful to our health?
It is obvious that we need to stop or severely cut back our consumption of bottle water to help the environment and our own health. We also need to MANDATE recycling of all plastic water bottles to help clean up the mess we have already made and to minimize the problems for the future.
