Water is a basic human right and even though 75% of the entire art is covered with water, only 3% is freshwater and most of it is inaccessible. A lot of countries lack access to plain drinking water.
Companies like Nestle, Coca Cola and Pepsi have started pumping water from places all over USA from California to Michigan to Maine. They are taking water from these places for free and without warning the residents of that place. They then sell it for a huge profit. After watching the documentary Tapped, one fact that I found shocking was that bottled water from companies like Aquafina and Dasani that claim to have water from the mountain ranges and springs is actually tap water sealed in a plastic bottle.These companies are actually just taking water for free and putting it directly into bottles and selling it at 1000 more the price of tap water when its the same thing. This is just municipal water in fancy packaging.
Last year, there was a drought in 35 out of 50 states in the USA.Even during droughts companies like Pepsi still took water from California and kept bottling it. People didn’t have water for their daily activities and these companies didn’t even temporarily stop. By doing this, they took the ground water and disrupted the soil cycle and eventually the food cycle. In Atlanta there was a level 4 drought which was the second worst drought ever, but these companies still didn’t stop. This lead to complexities liken food and eventually disrupting food chain as animals and plants were dying and lands were getting bare. The companies have a very technocentric worldview where they only care about their profit margins and economy and. ignore all the environmental problems their actions are causing.
At first bottle water were in green glass bottles but as time passed, the need for convince, light weight and portable water arose in the general public and the emergence of plastic bottles has a more of a negative impact. The plastic bottles are made up of PET-which is extracted from crude oil. These are a type of benzene ring which can cause cancer 80% of PET extracted overall in used by Nestle, Coca Cola and Pepsi. Along with producing such toxic products they are destroying a non renewable source of energy which is oil as they use 74 million gallons of oil every year to produce plastic bottles. Since plastic cannot be decomposed, when it goes back to the soil and water and harm the marine organisms who think its food. These bottles contain chemical toxins like vinyl chloride, benzene and toluene that are harmful to human themselves. The PET get into the chemical leaks and contaminate ground water, thus disrupting the water and the soil cycle and eventually the water cycle.
Therefore the more plastic bottles we buy, we are supporting these companies more. These companies are not even paying the people from where they are taking the water. I personally don’t buy bottled water and prefer carrying my own reusable water bottle or drink on water fountains.But after watching this documentary,I definitely understood that the plastic itself is not the source of problem, it is the companies that are taking water for free, unannounced that is causing environmental pollution and disruption of natural cycles. This Blue gold definitely needs to be covered and used properly since not a lot of it is left anymore.
