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Are glass water bottles better than plastic?

2022-01-11

Are glass water bottles better than plastic?

There is no competition. Glass is better for our environment than plastic, period. A minimum of eight million tons of plastic goes into the ocean every. single. year. Minimum. Let that sink in. We can't even imagine eight million tons of anything. Unless we're talking about fish, there shouldn’t be much of anything hanging out in the ocean. And if plastic doesn't end up there, it ends up in landfills, where a single plastic bottle will sit for 1,000 years. Even worse, once the plastic does start to break down, it will leach harmful chemicals into the area's soil and water reserves.

Plastic pollution is so prevalent because most people don't recycle. They toss plastic in the trash, and it goes to live in a landfill for the rest of eternity. Even when plastic water bottles are recycled, much of the plastic isn't usable during the recycling process. If the plastic isn't the right kind needed to make a new item or if it's been recycled too many times, it will be unrecyclable. Single-use plastics also use a lot of fossil fuels during production, releasing high levels of CO2 into the atmosphere and worsening the climate change crisis. And the chemicals released from the plants where plastics are made are highly toxic and significantly increase the likelihood that residents nearby will develop cancer and respiratory problems. Which disproportionately impacts communities of color, because in most instances those are the communities living near petrochemical plants.

Glass, on the other hand, is easier to recycle and glass doesn’t downcycle or go to waste - it recycles to make more glass. Even better, when you're using a reusable water bottle, you don't need to worry about waste because you can eternally drink from the same bottle. When your glass water bottle eventually becomes old or damaged, you can rest assured that it will be recycled into something new. And glass that isn’t recycled becomes rocks and sand and leaches nothing into the environment.

healthy and wellness

If environmental health isn't enough to convince you to make the switch, maybe your health is. Glass water bottles are made from natural, sustainable sources, unlike plastic, which is made of chemicals, most of which are harmful. In a nutshell. Glass can be recycled indefinitely without reducing the quality because it's made from natural sources like sand. According to the EPA, making a new product out of recycled glass is even easier than making a new bottle. Not true for plastic.

Plastic water bottles are made from many different chemicals that may leach into your water, meaning you're ingesting them. It's even worse if you're refilling plastic water bottles. You may feel like you're doing something good for the environment by hanging on to that single-use bottle for weeks, but they're called single-use for a reason. Not only can disposable plastic break down and leach chemicals into your water with each refill, they are also cheap and porous. Which means they tend to harbor bacteria and could make you sick with reuse. You may have also heard that many plastic water bottles contain BPA or some potentially worse BPA-replacement plastic hardeners in them (glass water bottles do not). These endocrine-disrupting chemicals can cause significant issues with your body's hormones. By imitating and intruding on your body's natural hormone production, BPA can lead to reproductive disorders, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and fetal development issues. Can I just say: not. worth. it.

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