How does drinking bottled water hurt the environment?

Question

I drink bottled water because the water from my tap tastes awful.

Answer 1

As said before, it is a combination of things, the depletion of auqufirs, the petroleum used for the bottles, the trasportation of the bottles, the waste and even if you recycle the bottle, there are limited applications for the recycled plastic.

The worst thing about it to me is many of the municipal sources around the nation are better water quality than the sources the bottled water companies us. Many of the bottled water companies just filter tap water and put it into a bottle. Do you really know where the water you are drinking is coming from?

Here is  a link from sierra club that details all the problems with bottled water.

http://www.sierraclub.org/committees/cac...

Answer 2

Mostly because it requires a lot of energy to transport water, which is heavy.  You've got to transport it from the source to the factory, then from the factory to the stores.  This is a lot of wasted energy (and greenhouse gas emissions) just to move around water you can just as easily get from your tap at home.  Also you're wasting the materials to make the plastic bottles instead of using your own reuseable bottle.  Then most of the bottles (70%) get thrown away instead of recycled, so they clog up landfills.

If you don't like the taste of your tap water, try getting a filter like Britta or PUR.  That should take care of it.

Answer 3

The number of bottles is a huge waste of plastic.  Plastics whether they are made from oil or plants do not biodegrade well.  Animals can get stuck in plastic bottles.  

Plastic is fabricated requiring much energy to produce.

Try using an inexpensive and easily installed water filter (Brita or Pur) to reduce your carbon footprint.  If you reuse your bottle a few times you are saving many pounds of plastic waste.

Answer 4

It takes 17 million barrels of oil a year to make the bottles to hold that water.

Answer 5

It isn't the drinking part that's the problem.

It's taking it from the aquifers underground & depleting them.

It's bottling it in plastic & shipping them by truck.

We use oil to make the plastic bottles, of course.

Then adding the plastic to landfill instead of recycling.

Much better to extract & improve local water supplies.

But that doesn't make as much money for the processor.

Access to clean fresh water ought to be a human right.