The disadvantages of plastic bottles
For a healthy lifestyle, the guideline is to drink 35 ml of water per kilogram of body weight every day. Do you already get this? If you sweat a lot, it is important to drink more than usual. This is to keep your fluid balance on track. What drinkware do you drink your water from? Do you do this from a glass or do you use a plastic bottle? Plastic bottles have a number of disadvantages and we will discuss that with you in this blog.
PET bottles can be harmful to health
Almost all water sold in the Netherlands is in bottles made of PET. We also call PET polyethylene terephthalate. Antimony is used in the production of PET and this can leak into the water. Although the chance is small, there is no 100% guarantee that your water is antimony free. Antimony is a substance that is on the list of carcinogenic substances. In short, you don't want antimony in your bottle of water!
PET bottles are full of plasticizers
The material PET itself is not flexible and even fragile. To make the material flexible, various plasticizers (substances to make PET flexible) are added to the mixture. Most added substances have been under pressure for decades because they may have harmful effects on health. The most well-known substance is BPA. BPA has long been discredited for its adverse health effects and was eventually banned. However, there are many more plasticizers than just BPA. You will often see BPA free on plastic bottles, this does not mean that no plasticizers have been added. This only means that the substance BPA is not in it!
Plastic even more harmful with hot weather
If you go out for a day in warm weather, do not take a plastic bottle of water with you. The fact is that when a plastic bottle heats up, even more toxic substances are released. Also make sure you don't store plastic bottles in a hot car. Then you better opt for a stainless steel drinking bottle.
A mega mountain of garbage
Unfortunately, plastic bottles are very harmful to our environment. The waste pile of disposable plastic is only getting bigger and plastic bottles have a large share in this. They come into our nature and never perish! The bottles are very harmful to nature and animals. A poignant example is the plastic soup in our ocean. We humans produce so much plastic that we simply cannot control the waste stream. In addition to this data, it is also a fact that little plastic is recycled.
Conclusion
Drinking water from a plastic bottle certainly does not necessarily mean that your health will be damaged or that immediate damage will occur. However, the frequency of consuming a single-use plastic bottle is an important factor here. Think consciously about it when you buy a one-time bottle or make sure you have a reusable drinking bottle with you. With a bit of healthy awareness and logical thinking, we are confident that we can reduce the waste mountain of plastic.