The environmental impact of plastic water bottles

🌍 Discover why plastic water bottles have a disastrous impact on the environment and health, and how to adopt a more sustainable alternative.

• Plastic pollution of the oceans and wildlife
• Limited, costly and energy-intensive recycling
• Bottled water: questionable quality and microplastics
• Solution: choose Star Water Filter® filtered tap water

Buying a bottle of water, opening it, drinking it and then throwing it away is a very common gesture these days. Too common, perhaps. In fact, this gesture is not really trivial.

In Europe, we consume 52 billion (52,000,000,000) bottles of water a year!

There are several problems associated with this type of consumption.

Environmental pollution

Europe is the world's biggest producer of plastic bottles. Discarded bottles are the most common form of waste in Europe's rivers, causing most of the plastic pollution in the oceans. By confusing pieces of plastic with food, marine fauna is directly impacted by this pollution. Not only does it kill animals, but the microplastics that come from the degradation of plastics end up being ingested by certain fish and crustaceans, which we in turn ingest.

It is impossible to clean up this waste once it has been diluted in the seas and oceans, and the only way to prevent this pollution is to stop, or drastically reduce, our purchases of plastic bottles.

The financial and energy cost of recycling plastic

We can certainly ease our consciences by thinking that plastic bottles are recycled. This is a selling point for manufacturers, even though we all know that the best way to avoid creating waste is not to consume them. It's true that plastic bottles, like many other types of plastic packaging, are recycled, at least in part. But there are still several problems. Firstly, a large proportion of this plastic is not recycled, so it ends up in the natural environment anyway. Secondly, recycling consumes a significant amount of energy, which in turn pollutes. Finally, plastic can only be recycled a maximum of 2 to 3 times, so it becomes a waste product that we don't know what to do with...

The quality of bottled water

For a long time, advertising and marketing have extolled the virtues of bottled water as being healthier than tap water. We all know today that this is not true. For one thing, the intrinsic quality of the water used in bottles is increasingly polluted, even from the ‘healthiest’ sources. Secondly, health standards for tap water are much stricter than those governing bottled water. Finally, the plastic used to package water represents a real health risk, due to the chemical additives used in its manufacture, which can break off and end up in our bodies. The main ones are polypropylene, polyethylene and polyethylene terephthalate. Bon appétit!

A recent French study (Agir pour l'environnement) found microplastic pollution in almost 80% of bottled waters. The prize goes to the 33-centilitre ‘Vittel Kids’ bottle, intended for children, with 121 microparticles of plastic per litre.

So change your drinking habits and switch to tap water! And since tap water is also polluted, opt for a Star Water Filter®.

Star Water Filter®

The technical content published on this website is written and validated by the Star Water Filter® technical team.

It is based on independent laboratory analyses, performance data from the Ultimate Star Filter® and experience gained in the design and use of gravity filtration systems.