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The Ugly Truth About Single-Serve Plastic Water Bottles
This post focuses on Public Enemy Number One: single-serve plastic water bottles. It’s time to get rid of them. Plastic bottles contribute significantly to the problem of landfill waste.
Here are some sobering facts to consider as you sip water out of yet another plastic bottle:
- The average American uses 156 plastic bottles annually, contributing to a massive 500 billion plastic bottles used annually.
- The average person drinks about 30 gallons of bottled water per year.
- 60 million plastic water bottles are thrown away daily in the United States.
- 35 billion empty water bottles are thrown away annually in the United States, with only 12% getting recycled.
- It takes more than 40,000 semi-tractor-trailer trucks (18-wheelers) a week to deliver all this water nationwide.
And there’s also the health issue to consider. Many plastics contain a chemical called bisphenol A (BPA), primarily used to make polycarbonate plastics. It is found everywhere. It is in many rigid plastic products such as plastic bottles, drinking glasses, eyewear, water supply pipes, shatterproof glass, can linings, dental sealants, CDs, and even on the shiny side of paper cashier receipts (to stabilize the ink).
The medical concern is that BPA has estrogen-like qualities that can cause hormone disruption, like many other chemicals in plastics. Hormone disruptors can affect how estrogen and other hormones act by blocking or mimicking them, which throws off the body's hormonal balance. Because estrogen can make hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer develop and grow, many women choose to limit their exposure to these chemicals that can act like estrogen.
How to Ditch the Single-Serve Plastic Bottle Habit
Two different approaches to solving this problem can work together.
The first option is to switch to reusable stainless steel or glass bottles, which is an easy and impactful choice. Many fashionable, easy-to-use options are available.
The second option piggybacks on option one—avoid single-serve bottled water altogether. Let’s look at the economics of bottled water, single-serve bottles vs. bulk drinking water. According to new research from WaterFilterGuru.com, one single serving (16.9-fluid-ounce) bottled water averages $1.60 in the U.S. (Costs can range from Walmart’s Pure Life Purified Water at 16 ½ cents—yes—that’s cents! per bottle to $7.25 a bottle for Berg brand water on Amazon!) So, depending on how many single-serve plastic water bottles you drink daily, your bottled water habit could cost you from $50.00 to $100.00 a month (at 1 to 2 bottles per day).
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The cheapest alternative is to drink tap water from your sink faucet instead. The City of Portland claims that drinking tap water in a reusable bottle uses 85% less energy and 79% less greenhouse gas emissions than drinking the same amount from a disposable water bottle.
The average American uses 167 bottles yearly (roughly 14 monthly) but only recycles 38. Drinking the recommended eight (8) glasses (or 64 oz.) of water daily costs much less than drinking single-serve plastic water bottles. According to several sources, the average price of tap water in the United States ranges from 44 cents per gallon (San Francisco) to less than 2 cents per gallon (Phoenix), making tap water significantly cheaper than bottled water. That means you are getting 16 8-oz. glasses of water for 44 cents, compared to spending $6.40 or more for four (4) bottled waters. Source: Statistica – Tap Water Prices in Selected US Cities (1 cubic meter = 264.172 gallons)
What if you don’t like your tap water’s taste or don’t trust your municipal water source? Filter your tap water or subscribe to a water delivery service. Filtered water is cost-effective and has a smaller environmental impact than bottled water. Research shows that paying for a water filter service is still cheaper than buying single-serve plastic water bottles, and you don’t have to worry about recycling!
If you are worried about tap water quality, check out EWG’s Tap Water Database. This group also has a ton of helpful information on drinking water standards and ratings for water filter systems. Their map of the United States is also quite handy—you can look at EWG's drinking water quality report for each state, which shows the results of tests conducted by water utilities and provided to EWG by each State Department of Health.
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