Imagine having a pile of plastic bottles in your backyard. Disgusting right? That’s exactly what we’re doing though, we don’t have piles of it in our backyards yet, no but we are polluting the habitats of animals and soon if plastic bottles aren't banned, it won't be very long till we see those bottles everywhere including our homes.
I agree, the production and sale of bottled water should be banned. Why? Well because it would not only remove waste but it would also keep the environment clean, it’s bad not only for you but animals and all living species and although plastic bottles are a good source for transportation, regardless they are still harmful.
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Plastic bottles may be recyclable but they most definitely aren’t biodegradable. It takes almost 1000 years for plastic to biodegrade completely. Do you even know where this plastic ends up? This ends up in landfills and oceans.(Slide 3) The bottles end up in landfills, and to decompose these plastic bottles it takes thousands of years and throughout this procedure, EACH bottle leaks harmful chemicals in our environment. The other plastic bottles that don’t end up in landfills, will end up in seas and oceans where they break up in small pieces and animals mistake it for food and will consume it, causing either sickness or worse death.
Despite all these waste facilities we still have a lot of waste. Australia only recycles 36% of PET(Polyethylene terephthalate) water bottles and the rest which is around 373 million plastic bottles ends up as waste.
Approximately 100 000 marine mammals die every year globally due to plastic, this is absolutely disgusting. We can’t just blame the producers because they are producing plastic bottles or in general plastic, NO, everyone is to blame. We must not sit back and think that just because everyone uses it, that we can, no, we must ALLwork together for the banning of plastic bottles. Did you know plastic bottles are the 5th most common rubbish found on coastline clean ups. If so many plastic bottles are found just on the coastline then imagine the amount there is in the oceans.
Also, whether you throw plastic bottles far away from oceans they will always end up there due to the wind, rain and waterways. When an animal consumes a lot of plastic, their digestive system could get clogged up causing them to starve to death. This plastic can also move up the food chain too by animals who eat other animals that have consumed plastic. For example this is an animal who has died due to excessive plastic and there are also other animals such as sea turtles that are endangered due to the fact that they can’t differentiate the difference between the food they eat and plastic.
That's not the only reason why plastic bottles should be banned but there's also the fact that it is bad for our health. Research shows that bottled water contains microplastic. Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic usually less than 5mm. Not only are we harmed by this but there marine animals who are in need of much more help due to the excessive amount of microplastic in their habitat. These microplastics are so small that they sometimes go through water filters into the water. A study from ‘Environmental Science and Technology’ says that on average a human may be consuming from 39000 to 52000 microplastics a year. Microplastic is everywhere, in the air, in oceans, in food and bottled water too. Too much microplastic can physically damage our organs, impact on our immune system and can cause high risks to animals because unlike us they don’t realise the difference between plastic and food. You must have heard the myth about bottled water being cleaner than tap water, this is proven incorrect. The ‘World Health Organisation (WHO)’ have revealed a review showing that the presence of microplastic in the form of plastic fibre was present in 93% of the popular bottled water brands, and that the levels of plastic fibres found in bottled water were almost double than those found in tap water. Would you really take the risk to drink bottled water?
In contrast, it is understandable that bottled water can be convenient as it is usually used for single time purposes and is also easier to produce and transport. Buying glass or any other sort of bottled water would not only make it more expensive but you would require more effort to take care of. Have you ever seen someone panic or feel bad about losing their plastic bottle? No, people don’t usually care about it since it’s cheap. Also, due to plastic bottles being light in weight, soft and having low melting points, they reduce the energy needed, the cost for transportation and it takes less energy to manufacture compared to glass. This is why people prefer having plastic bottles than glass or any other types. Plastic bottles are very convenient right, so what’s the issue with drinking from them? Forget that they are cheap and they are that it's easy to just have them, these bottles are harming the Earth.
Although there's also the fact that the production of plastic bottles requires our natural resources. It requires crude oil which is a scarce resource, and approximately 1 quarter of a bottle of oil is needed to produce just ONE plastic bottle. Researchers believe that we should have a replacement of plastic and its replacement is biodegradable plastic, which is made from natural resources and unlike plastic bottles would not pollute the environment causing harm to us or animals.
To conclude, plastic bottles are a big threat not just to us but to our environment and animals too. This isn’t to be taken lightly as if not banned or used minimally can cause a lot of damage. Every person can make a change.
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