Bob Ross once said “Bottled water is a mistake… Not a happy accident”. Mr. Ross’s statement is very true. Bottled water is an item in today’s market that should be banned.

One reason bottled water should be banned is the cost. Bottled water costs more to produce and distribute. An article from PR Watch says “bottled water costs 2,000 times more than what tap water costs” (1). It is much cheaper to just use tap water. Also all of the money used goes to waste. The same article from PR Watch says “80% of used water bottles end up in landfills” (1). This means that all of the money that was used to buy and produce those water bottles basically end up in the landfill.

Another reason bottled water should be banned is water safety. Tap water is just as safe, if not safer than bottled water. One reason for this is the “safe drinking water act”. The “safe drinking water act” was established in 1974 to “ensure that all drinking water that is actually or potentially designed for drinking use, whether from aboveground or underground sources must meet minimum safety standard established by the U.S. environmental agency” (1) says an article from CNN.

Lastly bottled water is bad for the earth. For one bottled water is one of the major contributors to the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. The plastic from those bottles never goes away and most of it ends up in the Garbage Patch. An article from National Geographic says most plastics “do not wear down; they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces” (5). This means that the plastic will stay there even if you can’t see it. The plastic from water bottles also harms animals in the environment. The plastic may be mistake for food by some animals. An article from the Center for Biological diversity says “Fish in the North Pacific ingest 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic each year” (11). A lot of fish are being killed because of how much plastic is being put in the ocean.
 
Some people might say that bottled water tastes better. This point of view makes sense because bottled water is sometimes filtered an extra time. However, that is not necessarily true. The city of cleveland tested this. In an article PR Watch says “Fiji also lost in taste tests against Cleveland's tap water”. This means that people preferred the tap water. 

Bottled water introduces many toxic things into our world. Unfortunately, not all people see that. Some people don’t even know that this an issue. We need to get it out into the world that bottled water should be banned.