Pollution. Plastic water bottles are petroleum based. - Earth-policy.org, “Bottled Water: Pouring Resources Down the Drain” Bisphenol-A is one such chemical mentioned above. Another reason to focus on bottled water, Mason says, is that its popularity is a major contributor to the world’s plastic pollution problem. Americans purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year, averaging about 13 bottles per month for every person in the U.S.! More than 17 million barrels of oil are required to produce enough plastic water bottles to meet America’s annual demand for bottled water. (2) 90% of the cost of bottled water is due to the packaging, not the water quality. That means by using a reusable water bottle, you could save an average of 156 plastic bottles annually. Single-use plastics also include plastic packaging, for example of meats and fresh produce, which accounts for almost half of all plastic pollution. It should come as no surprise that one of the most pressing environmental issues we face is plastic pollution. For example breast and prostate cancer. #4: It is estimated that 4 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide annually. (3) 3 liters of water is used to package 1 bottle of water. In the U.S alone, it takes 1.5 million barrels of oil to meet the demands. Approximately only 9% of all plastic gets recycled, while the remaining 91% ends up in landfills or leaches into our oceans. (Better known as BPA.) Plastic water bottles can bring clean drinking water to people who don’t have it, and plastic straws can help people with disabilities drink. Plastic microfibers, meanwhile, have been found in municipal drinking water systems and drifting through the air. Plastic bottles are a single-use plastic, a product designed to be used only once and then discarded. More than 100 million plastic bottles are used worldwide every day! Plastic pollution from discarded water bottles, polystyrene coffee cups, grocery bags, synthetic clothing fiber, and other waste breaks down into tiny bits of plastic no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence. Researchers put GPS and satellite tags in plastic bottles … It leeches into the contents of the plastic bottle. But all those plastic bottles use a lot of fossil fuels and pollute the environment. Banning single-use plastic bags with local ordinances or a state law is pivotal to improving the health of our waterways. Electronic tags released in the Ganges river show plastic pollution can travel thousands of kilometres in just a few months. The moment the modern plastic beverage bottle changed the world’s drinking habits is difficult to pinpoint. In fact, Americans buy more bottled water than any other nation in the world, adding 29 billion water bottles a year to the problem. 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