Buying canned water might make you feel like you’re healthy and hydrated, but in recent years, we’ve realised that it’s not the best thing for our health or the planet. In fact, one of the best steps you can take towards helping the planet is refusing to buy canned water any longer.
1. Canned Water Is Expensive
Canned water is costly and expensive, especially if you try to keep up with the recommended daily amounts. For example, those who exercise are often told to drink more than 2 litres of water a day – sometimes 3 or 4 depending on their sex, age, height, activity levels, and so on. For some, drinking 1 litre a day seems like a stretch, but staying hydrated is key to health and wellbeing. Drinking more water can only be a good thing, but that’s providing you’re not polluting the planet while doing so.
2. Plastic Cans Are Not Sustainable
Water that comes in plastic cans is not sustainable and has caused huge environmental issues. The manufacturing of foam and plastic products can include the use of plasticizers (chemical softening agents), benzene, styrene and Bisphenol A (BPA), which are all toxic to human health and wildlife. Environmental regulations have reduced the number of toxic components used in the process, but chemicals are still used and they do present a set of hazards for both consumers and the environment. These chemicals and components used in the plastic manufacturing process are not biodegradable, and they pose potential hazards to the environment. The plastic itself can take thousands of years to biodegrade, too.
3. Canned Water Can Be Contaminated
A lot of people don’t realise that their canned water can be contaminated – in fact, some water companies have been in trouble for this over recent years and have received a lot of backlash. Things like glass particles, mold, and even crickets have been found in water bottles in the past. As plastic cans contain toxins, the water can also become contaminated.
4. Canned Water Is Not Necessarily Cleaner
A lot of people think that by purchasing canned water they are automatically consuming cleaner water. However, canned water isn’t necessarily cleaner or safer – that’s just a marketing ploy! The water is not tested in many cases, so you really don’t know what you’re drinking. Of course, how clean your tap water is will depend on where you live, but you’ll often find that your canned water is not far off your tap water in terms of metals and other things (a small amount is not dangerous, but higher amounts can cause problems).
Water filters act as the last line of defense against over 2,100 known toxins that may enter the body through drinking water.
Mercy
The energy required to transport and recycle certain plastics often exceeds the cost to make products containing virgin plastic material, so many plastics aren’t recycled. So much plastic is sent to landfills each year, and a lot of plastic actually ends up in our oceans and on our streets, killing wildlife and marine life in torturous ways. Birds, fish, and other species can eat the plastic, and this slowly kills them. They can get tangled up and stuck in it, slowly suffocating or bleeding to death. The ways in which plastic harms the environment and everything in it really cannot be emphasised enough.
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