The Environmental Benefits of Boxed Water

Everyone is pretty familiar with that shocking commercial that shows us how many plastic water bottles Americans use, enough to stretch around the world over 100 times. As guilty as one might feel about it, it has become a dependency – and as a bad habit, it’s not easily broken.

On top of the waste that is obvious (plastic bottles in the trash), there are the problems with those bottles that don’t come instantly to mind. Plastic bottle production uses huge amounts of oil, not to mention the pollution created in transporting them. While it can sometimes to be difficult to imagine the distant future and how damaging all this plastic is for our environment, what is instantly terrifying are the studies that plastic leaks BPA into the water, which is linked to a variety of health problems, such as breast and prostate cancer and low sperm count.

An obvious fix is to have a reusable, swish bottle. But that isn’t always an opportune option. Boxed water.  75% of the container is made from paper that will not leach dangerous chemicals into the very water you are drinking.  The cartons are shipped unfilled to various retailing-points and filled on demand as needed. According to the company this is reducing transportation costs and environmental impact dramatically.

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You are What You Eat

The notion behind the phrase “You are what you eat” is that to be fit and healthy you need to eat good food.  In the 1960’s the phrase became the slogan for healthy eating and even today we associate with good, healthy foods.  Eat junk and feel like junk.

Simply put, cows eat grass, chickens eat grain, fish eat fish and humans eat all of those things; natural, organic, healthy.  Unfortunately that is not the case.  Farm animals are often fed same species meat, manure and other animal waste, drugs and chemicals, and plastics.  Now some plastic is intentionally fed to livestock, but not all of it. 

 

The Panama Rubber Tree is native to the tropical areas of Mexico, Central America and northern South America.  The latex gathered from the trees was converted into usable rubber by the Mesoamerican peoples in Pre-Columbian times.  The fascination with rubber led to experiments and eventually developed into the plastics of today.  And the bulk of rubber is now synthetic, derived from petroleum.

The estimated global plastic production is about 245 million tons, the majority of it: single use items.  Unfortunately this disposable plastic does not just go away.  It breaks down into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces, releasing toxins such as phthalates and bisphenol A.  These toxins have been associated with altered hormone levels, reproductive effects, and increased incidence of chronic diseases, including cancer. 

Not only do they release toxins, but the plastics are eaten by fish.  Fish are not only eaten by people, but fish-meal is a common additive in livestock feed. 

Welcome to the food chain, plastic.