Ban Bottled Water: Microplastics Reside in Them Globally
adetokunbo.substack.com
adetokunbo.substack.com
>What are Microplastics? And 6 tips on how reduce to them. Read More.
>Concerned About Microplastics in Drinking Water? The Right Filter Can Help. Read More.
>The Best Bottled Water To Buy for Maximum Hydration and Health. Read More.
>How to Choose the Right Bottled Water. Read More.
All but the last link seem to link to sites that are trying to commercial sites (ie. companies selling water filtration technologies or affiliate marketing sites) that are trying to get "organic" search traffic (ie. by posting content articles). Also for some reason the author thought it was fit to advertise chinese vegan cooking? What does that have to do with microplastics and bottled water?
>Traditional Chinese Vegan diet, Credit, The Works of Life
This could be akin to "can you believe they leeched people because they thought their blood was bad?"
100 Years from now...
"Can you believe people drank out of those things, basically eating credit cards worth (yea, like they would have those still) of plastic?"
(styrofoam)
I think future generations, if there are any, will look back on us as being extraordinarily bizarre in our greed and waste.
Pretty much everything is "disposable" if you're being pedantic. I can throw away a couch or a mug as well, but there's a reason those aren't marketed as "disposable"
Is it plastics? Is it other synthetic compounds like PTFE, PFOA, PFAS?
I don't think the links are clear, but I'm not going to be surprised if it becomes clear these synthetic compounds are <all> negatively affecting human health.
Leaded gasoline was sold between 1922 and 1996, and it's been claimed leaded gas has killed millions, and affected the IQ and mental well being of many.
And the sad part is, lead was well understood as toxic before leaded gas was sold in 1922.
For example, testosterone is elevated in males after winning a fight. So if physical confrontations among males are getting less frequent for some reason (which seems like a good thing to me), then that could lead to lower testosterone levels.
Another possible explanation is that we've had good birth control for a few generations now, which has eliminated the advantage of high sex drive on a males' chances of fathering children. So there is no longer a selection effect for high testosterone males. (Also seems like a good thing.)
Anyway, my point is not that the above explanations are correct; just that there might be benign explanations.
https://www.aabb.org/news-resources/news/article/2022/04/26/...
"We submit that the safe operating space of the NE-PB is exceeded when annual production and releases increase at a pace that outstrips the global capacity for assessment and monitoring. Based on the evidence presented here, we submit that we are now in a zone of exceedance of the Planetary Boundary fornovel entities. Further, even if we were to stabilize or reduce production and releases, the effects due to our transgression of the NE-PB will still be a threat due to the persistence of many novel entities. Thus, we conclude that increases in production and releases of novel entities are not consistent with keeping humanity within the safe operating space, in the light of the global capacity for management. We invite the research community to continue work, using the impact pathway and understanding of the NE-PB presented here, to develop more operational control variables, more robust quantification of the NE-PB, and better-defined limits for NE emissions. However, these continued research efforts need to go in parallel with urgent action to manage today’s NE-PB threats."
Or put a deposit of the cost of the beverage on every bottle. if the beverage cost 1 USD, you pay $2 and you get the $1 back when you return the bottle. Price increases, deposit increases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation#...
Plus, ever try and return a bottle as a "trash collector" ? Stores will throw you out claiming the bottle was not purchased in the store. So I would say 90% of bottles thrown out end up in a land-fill or in the sea.
I am not sure what you mean by the store turning you away… there is a location where you turn the bottles and cans in to get paid, it is not connected to a store. It is run by the government.
Plastic bottles killed the "consigne", and it seems like we have neither the infrastructure, nor the will, to bring it back.
https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2017/11/15/recy...
I don't know which geopolitical crisis might put us on a different track. A massive shortage of corn sugar ? A popular hoax making parents believe that plastic bottles will turn their kids gay ?
Higher deposit for plastic sounds good to me.
The real answer is in giving people clean drinking water at the tap IMO, so many people use bottled water exclusively.
/s
I’d love to see a warning label on products “Contains microplastics that may increase risk of health problems” similar to cigarette warnings.
tap water: because you're out and about and didn't have the foresight or didn't want to bring a bottle with you, so you buy a bottle on site and drink from that. I doubt many people are buying bottled water to drink at home.
sugar water: because people like the taste of sugar water, and plastic bottles is the best way to deliver said carbonated sugar water to the consumer.
>I’d love to see a warning label on products “Contains microplastics that may increase risk of health problems” similar to cigarette warnings.
The fact that bottled water contains a wide array of microplastics, some of which aren't used in single use beverage bottles, makes me think the microplastics are coming from the water supply, rather than from the plastic bottle itself. If that's the case, you'd need to add a warning for tap water as well, as well as every sort of food that is made using tap water (probably every food ever). That'd just lead to a prop 65 situation[1] where everything has that warning and it gets tuned out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65
Boy, do I have some bad news for you.
No offence meant but you're really out of touch here.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/973987/us-consumer-behav...
Then replace the single-use bottles with reusable ones like stores have done with bags.
>plastic bottles is the best way to deliver
Soda fountains, cans, at-home carbonation are all just as good if not better.
>microplastics are coming from the water supply
What? Water does not naturally contain microplastics. The microplastics come from plastic, not from water.
Why do you have such an interest in defending the bottle beverage industry?
What realistically happens is that we end up with thicker "reusable" bottles that end only being used once. This is basically what happened in cities that banned single use plastic takeout containers. Restaurants replaced them with "reusable" containers (think the plastic ones used for mealprep), that end up being chucked after a single use. The whole situation is worse than before because the "reusable" containers use more plastic and therefore have a larger ecological footprint than the thinner/disposable ones.
>Soda fountains
Most restaurants do have them, for cost reasons. However, they're not really feasible for small scale operations (eg. food trucks) and/or remote areas.
>cans
They're not recloseable, which presents a big problem for large portion sizes. Also they don't seem to be available in sizes larger than 12oz for carbonated drinks (maybe they don't scale well?).
> at-home carbonation are all just as good if not better.
They're only really economical if you're a frequent drinker. Otherwise it will take forever for you to recoup the cost of the unit. There are other issues with it as well. The syrup for those aren't "name brand", which puts off some people. Also, IME you lose quite a bit of fizz when mixing the syrup with the carbonated water (they tell you to carbonate the water first, then add the syrup).
>What? Water does not naturally contain microplastics. The microplastics come from plastic, not from water.
Water might not "naturally contain microplastics" in the sense that they didn't contain microplastics a few hundred years ago, but nowadays microplastics are everywhere to the extent that you can assume almost everything contains microplastic. From the article:
"Microplastics in bottled water may affect the health of millions of people, and they show their presence worldwide. Before, experts detected their prevalence in the world’s oceans, where more than five trillion pieces of plastics swim about"
see also: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/micro...
>Why do you have such an interest in defending the bottle beverage industry?
Why do you have such an interest in questioning other commenter's motivations?
You’re arguing for a status quo that needs radical change in the face of looming ecological disaster. No one else commenting defending microplastics like you are here talking like this is all okay. What is there to gain by this?
>No one else commenting defending microplastics like you are here talking like this is all okay.
I'm really not. In the comment you replied to, I pointed out:
1. why people why might buy bottled water/sugar water
2. why microplastic warning labels on bottled water might be flawed
The first is a explanation of why people drink bottled water, and isn't a defense of anything. I suppose the latter is "arguing for a status quo" in the sense that it's a suggestion to move away from the status quo, and I oppose it, but you need to have a really polarized worldview to think that opposing a policy suggestion because it's bad means I think "this is all okay", or that I'm a shill for the opposite side (as your thinly veiled comments imply). For instance, if someone's suggesting that we solve the housing crisis in the US by giving everybody $1M, and I argue against that by pointing out that giving $1M in helicopter money might be a bad idea, it doesn't mean I think the housing situation "is all okay", nor does it mean I'm a shill for landlords.
Even the best tap water likely flows through miles of plastic pipe before it reaches your home.
With that said, some of the businesses practices around the extraction and marketing of bottled water are abhorrent and cannot be excused.
Plus, microplastics are a global phenomenon. Like, they're found on the bottom of the ocean.
E.g. FEMA recommends bottled water, or replacing water and bleaching every 6 months: https://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/f&web.pdf
I think using plastic only for emergencies is perfectly rational and appropriate. Or buy a reusable plastic jug and use that.
Sadly in some places it probably is safer/tastes better. But for most of us our municipal water supply is far superior. Mine's from a mountain fed aquaphor, no way I'm drinking plastic infused bottled crap shipped 2000km that's taken from yet another municipal water supply anyway!
I think we just should look at bottled water as a strange thing to ship around. A little stigma here would go a long way.
It’s practically a miracle that I can turn on a faucet anywhere in my state and feel safe drinking the water.
Is that inflicted with micrometals??