Economics and Environmental Hazards Essay Example for Free

Economics and Environmental Hazards EssayIn the 21st century, global melt, littering, waste, and temperature rises have been the subject of tenseness for many scientists. While examining the many causes of global warming, scientists found fossil fuel emissions and CO2 emissions to be a study cause. Although Earth is k at wiz timen as the Blue Planet for its vast piss sources, much of that wet is salt weewee. Only 3% of the Earth is fresh peeing, and 70% of that is in glacial ice, unreachable by most. Thus, unaccompanied 0. 5% of the Earth is make of usable fresh weewee. This limited amount of pissing is unsuitable for the innovations expanding population.Much of this pissing, however, can be easily conserved by switching from bott conduct water to criticize water. by using tap water and conserving charge plate, we can have 27 times the amount of water we shortly be saving, and use water sources wisely so as to non run out. Literature reappraisal In the 1930s, t he subjects of global warming, water, and lack of resources for fossil fuels became concern for Americans. The refreshed York Times ran their first global warming article in 1929, when it first was considered a myth. Now that global warming has be succeed a major concern for nation, we realize how much we have wasted natures resources- especially water.Although 75% sh ar of the Earth is made up of water, less than 1% is boozingable and accessible by people. Countless blogs, websites, newspapers, and faculty member journals, such as the Journal of Dental Association (2003) and BioMed Central (2009), describe how our thoughtless actions have led to water depletion. Through processing, we waste 26 liters of water to get 1 liter of bottled water. The bottles are made in China using crude oil and transported thousands of miles on oil-eating machines, causing the ozone layer to melt.There are now seldom disputes to the existence of ozone depletion, and media uses print and internet t o support the narrowting down on bottled water. Bottled body of water Economics and Environmental Hazards. Thousands of years ago, water was a yield from the gods, to be saved and cherished. It allowed ancient civilizations to originate into structured societies, and gave people the ability to survive on domesticating animals and growing plants. Today, in the modern world, water is a lot taken for granted, and has become a daily thing of our lives.We see water fountains everywhere, and bottled water can be purchased in bulk. However, at the current rate we are using water, freshwater amounts are likely to decimate. This gift from the gods has brought surroundal harm to the world and wasted the money of thousands of people. Thus, in order to protect the environment and save our own money, we must make good choices and switch from excessively using bottled water to using tap water. One of the top reasons people often buy bottled water is because of the convenience it provides (Fe rrier, 2001, pp.118-119). Easy life is what the unblemished economy runs on, as we have seen from the declining economy. As income lessens, people are reverting back to an older life style of doing things themselves instead of purchasing services and goods. While bottled water may taste better because of chemicals that companies add in, it as well as cost significantly more. A New York Times reporter calculated that eight glasses of New York City tap water were about 49 cents a year, besides 8 glasses of bottled water would be 2,900 times more expensive- as much as $1,400 per year.Because water is something that every household needs, it is tenable to conclude that by switching to bottled water, families could cut their water expenses in half (Helm, 2008) and America as a whole could save. The high costs of purchasing bottled water are often due to the processing that bottled water must go through and the costs of shipping and plastic. Instead of drinking water from a topical anesthetic river or opposite water source, people choose to drink water shipped from Fiji, where extra charge is added for shipping. The plastic that is used to make the bottle also adds charge.A replacement for this kind of convenience is drinking from the bottles and and then continuously refilling them to save your money and the environment. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 85% of water bottles in the unite States end up in landfills (cited in Aslam, 2006). Unfortunately, plastic takes up to 1,000 years to decompose and the fuel emissions that pitch trucks emanate destroy the ozone layer. Even more smog and smoke is given off by the manufacturing plant, add to global warming, evaporation of our current freshwater supply, and melting/mixing of glacial freshwater and ocean water. about 70% of freshwater is in glacial ice, and as a result of temperatures rising, the freshwater melts, mixing in with saltwater and becoming undrinkable until further chemical process ing. Another common myth about bottled water is that it is wellnessier. A study conducted by University of Birmingham researchers found that The majority of participants believed that bottled water has some health benefits but that they were not necessarily significant or superior to the benefits provided by tap water (BioMed Central, 2009).The participants, users of the universitys sports center, stated that the health benefits of bottled water were negligible, and it was taste and convenience that truly motivated them to buy bottled water. Some research unconstipated suggests the opposite- that bottled water is less beneficial to health than tap water. While communities actively add in fluoride a fossa fighter- to the water supply, the majority of bottled water contains little to no fluoride (Rugg-Gunn, 2003). Many large water companies currently support processes such as distillation and/or osmosis both remove all fluoride from the water (American Dental Association, 2003).Si nce we now know that bottled water is not healthier than other water sources, we must reflect again on the numerous drawbacks of bottled water. Landfills continue to grow and grow, leading to larger emissions of ozone-depleting gases (Sarma, 2002). Birds and other small animals choke on plastic, misunderstanding it for food, and also die as a result. The ecosystem is dying as a result. The world works as a whole, a cycle, a circle. The consequences of our actions will always come back to bite us, or in the case of water, our posterity when they have low water supply.Conserving water today will benefit people later. In addition, as we become closer and closer to high UV radiation exposure and losing our ozone layer, scientists are frantically trying to build labs, gather money, and conduct extensive research about how to conserve the environment and water. By not procrastinating, and saving plastic and water resources now, we will save great amounts of money. The exotic island of Fi ji is know for its pure, fresh, crisp water, even to Americans who live thousands of miles away.A 16 ounce bottle of Fiji water currently costs from $1. 50 to $2. 50. At a rate like that, when we are at the edge of the Great Lakes and other vast water sources, but purchase water from the other side of the world, our money is being interchange away to foreign countries. Most of 2. 7 million tons of plastic used for bottling and packaging come from China (Aslam, 2006). The result is a national economic breakdown, not only in the water industry, but in all industries, since people cannot cut down on the amount of water they need to drink.It takes 63 million gallons of oil per year to manufacture water bottles (Niman, 2007). That is not only more water than Fijians themselves drink that we are buying, but also 63 million extra gallons of oil and plastic that we toss away. Ironically, one third of Fijians are in destitution and lack the amount of water they need. Because one liter of bo ttled water uses 26 liters of water, one kilogram of fossil fuel, and one pound of CO2 (Thangham, 2007), little is left for the Fijians in destitute. This is true for not only Fiji waters, but all waters in the world.In 2007, Fiji, one of the worlds most popular drinking water sources, became the first bottled water company to release its carbon copy footprint -85,396 metric tons of CO2eq (Corporate Social Responsibility, 2008). Imagine the carbon footprint total for the world, or even the United States. Perhaps American water companies have not released their carbon footprints because of how overwhelmingly large they are. If we could cut down on how much bottled and imported water we drank, we could preserve a large amount of water for the future.