The Dangers of Plastic Water Bottles and Fracking

Did you know that it takes 700 years for a single water bottle to degrade and dissolve? Also, did you know that each year in the United States, 38 million plastic water bottles end up in landfills? Or the possibility that fracking causes cancer? These are the perilous consequences of water bottles and fracking.

You may believe that water bottles are safe, portable, easy to handle, clean, of higher quality, and handy. However, you are completely incorrect; water bottles are extremely harmful and dangerous to consume. For example, if left out too long, the low-quality plastic used by many water bottle manufacturers may pollute the water within. Chemicals leach from the plastic and wreak havoc on your immune system. Also, roughly 25% of the water in those bottles comes from public water supplies, indicating that they are not as pure as people believe. Another problem is that every five minutes, we discard enough plastic to completely cover eight football fields. Finally, only 1 out 6 plastic water bottles are returned. The others are put in various landfills. Which will take a long time to break down.

Fracking is the process of injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks, boreholes, etc. The process of fracking is very dangerous and should not be treated lightly. For instance, shale layers of rock can hold a type of oil that does not float to the surface like in movies and when under immense pressure with sand and many toxic chemicals mixed in which will pollute water supplies. In addition to this, there have been small earthquakes that have been reported in structures thousands of feet underground. This contributes to the release of gases into the atmosphere, causing pollution and climate change. In addition, over 280 billion gallons of wastewater have been produced since 2012. Much of it has turned into a slaty muck that is nearly impossible to clean. Finally, because of all the methane in the water, there have been reports and videos of farmers lighting their facets of water in their houses on fire.

Plastic water bottles and fracking are huge problems that need to be addressed. There are a few things we can do to help minimize the negative effects of these. The first option is to use reusable water bottles, which will save you money while also reducing the amount of plastic you use. Surprisingly, the cost of making that was higher than the cost of the water in the bottle. Similar to reusable water bottles, the water bottles can be recycled so that they can be reused rather than taking up valuable landfill space. It takes a long time for this substance to degrade and dissolve. Finally, if everyone took the time to recycle their water bottles, enough energy would be generated to power a single light bulb for 6 hours.

To summarize, fracking and water bottles must be treated harshly, and if they are not, they will harm the future of humanity as well as the surrounding ecosystem. These measures must be implemented, or humanity's future will be jeopardized.