Every year, billions of pounds of waste ends up in the oceans, forming city sized islands made entirely of trash. A vast majority of this trash is plastic, meaning it will take thousands of years to decompose.
Plastic bottles make up a large proportion of plastic waste, and they actually go through an extensive pollutant filled process to create. Every year, 17 million barrels of oil are used to create 50 billion disposable water bottles in the United States alone! Only about one in five bottles are properly recycled.
Not only does that waste pollute our oceans, but it affects seafood. Scientists in Belgium calculated that people who eat seafood eat up to 11,000 tiny pieces of plastic every year. Ick!
What can we do to alleviate the burden inflicted on Mother Earth’s oceans? Reusable water bottles are a tried and true environmentally friendly solution. Switching to a reusable water bottle decrease the oil used, greenhouse gasses emitted, and bottles thrown away, reducing pollution on several levels.
Aside from environmental benefits, reusable water bottles have many other advantages over disposable ones. For example, using a reusable water bottle is cheaper than constantly buying water bottles. Beverages are notoriously expensive to buy when you’re out, but if you’ve brought your own, that’s more money in your pocket! The average American can save about $200 per year just by not buying disposable water bottles.
That means you could reward yourself with 50 Big Mac’s after every year of using a reusable bottle(not that you should).
A plastic bottle may seem convenient but a majority of bottled water actually comes from tap water in the US. Except you have to pay 2000x more for it in a plastic bottle. Even more shocking is that a Canadian study showed that tap water actually had less bacteria than bottled. There’s even talk of plastic leaching into your drinking water.
My favorite reason to have BYOB? Temperature control, my friend. Thermoflasks keep cold beverages cold and hot beverages hot. Combine that with a one handed pour and I am sold!
Other advantages of reusable bottles include being BPA free and let’s be honest – looking cooler. Best of all you won’t have to contribute to plastic pollution in the ocean. That’s basically billions of pounds of reasons why you would use a reusable water bottle.
Save our planet, tell a friend.