By: Grant Capter Trevor Lowe The Water Bottle By: Grant Capter Trevor Lowe

Use of a Water Bottle Many different water bottles are used daily. They have developed over time to ensure the most water, and in the best shape. Above this text box you can see some of the bottles have a slim shape so they fit in the palm of your hand.

The Timeline of a Water Bottle

Water Bottle Timeline (1845) Hiram Ricker begins bottling and selling the spring water on his property in Poland Spring, Maine, as a cure for kidney ailments. Poland Spring is born. The first shipments are 3-gallon jugs that sell for 15 cents at a local grocer. (1863) Perrier water is bottled by decree of Napoleon III “For the good of France”. (1907) A plant with an underground conveyor system opens at Poland Spring. Bottling room walls are lined with Carrera glass for ease of cleaning; employees must shower and change into white linen uniforms before work. (1912) Halsey Taylor invents a water fountain for drinking, founding an eponymous company to market it. The water cooler office-gossip phenomenon is born. (1968) DuPont engineer Nathaniel Wyeth (Brother of painter Andrew) invents polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for use in soda bottles. 16 years later, PET will feed a surge of single-serve bottled-water sales. (1977) Perrier, in the green glass, bowling pin shaped bottle, launches in the USA, backed by millions of dollars in marketing. Yuppies rejoice. Sales soar to $20million in its first year, and triple that in its second..

Water Bottle Timeline Cont. (1994) Pepsi tests a brand of purified tap water called Aquafina in Wichita, Kansas. (1999) Coke introduces Dasani, purified tap water with minerals added in. Both Coke and Pepsi put the water through a hyper-filtration system in order to laud its purity to consumers. (2000) Poland Spring, now part of Nestle, opens an enormous plant 40 miles south of Poland, Maine. By 2006, the facility is producing enough each year to give a 6-pack to every man, woman and child in the US. (2001) Aquafina becomes the top-selling bottled water in America. (2006) Bottled Water environmental concerns begin to affect American culture slightly. (2007) As of 2007, Italians drink the most bottled water in the world per/person at 50 gallons/person a year. (1989) The Los Angeles Times declares: “The most intriguing (Fashion) accessory to come out of the ‘80s is the Evian water bottle” of the French Company Danone

Manufacturing Plastic The technological road from oil field to finished plastic product has numerous fascinating side trips. Here’s the route taken in the petroleum-to-plastics process: 1. Petroleum is drilled and transported to a refinery. 2. Crude oil and natural gas are refined into ethane, propane, hundreds of other petrochemical products and, of course, fuel for your car. 3. Ethane and propane are "cracked" into ethylene and propylene, using high-temperature furnaces. 4. Catalyst is combined with ethylene or propylene in a reactor, resulting in "fluff," a powdered material (polymer) resembling laundry detergent. 5. Fluff is combined with additives in a continuous blender. 6. Polymer is fed to an extruder where it is melted. 7. Melted plastic is cooled then fed to a pelletizer that cuts the product into small pellets. 8. Pellets are shipped to customers. 9. Customers manufacture plastic products by using processes such as extrusion, injection molding, blow molding, etc.

Disposal Facts In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each but only recycled an average of 23 percent. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfills. Bottled water costs between $1 and $4 per gallon, and 90 percent of the cost is in the bottle, lid and label. According to the Beverage Marketing Corp, the average American consumed 1.6 gallons of bottled water in 1976. In 2006 that number jumped to 28.3 gallons. It takes over 1.5 million barrels of oil to manufacture a year’s supply of bottled water. That’s enough oil to fuel 100,000 cars. Eight out of 10 plastic water bottles become landfill waste. In 2007 we spent $16 billion on bottled water. That’s more than we spent on iPods or movie tickets. Plastic bottles can take up to 1000 years before they begin to decompose once buried. If everyone in NYC gave up water bottles for one week, they would save 24 million bottles from being landfilled. One month on the same plan would save 112 million bottles, and one year would save 1.328 billion bottles from going into the landfill.

Life of a Water Bottle more than 1 billion water bottles are winding up in the trash in California each year. That translates into nearly 3 million empty water bottles going to the trash EVERY day and an estimated $26 million in unclaimed California Refund Value (CRV) deposits annually. If recycled, the raw materials from those bottles could be used to make 74 million square feet of carpet, 74 million extra large T-shirts or 16 million sweaters, among other things. The bottles also present significant air pollution concerns as many are incinerated with regular trash. Anyone who has seen a plastic bottle melt knows of the toxic smoke and fumes it can create. These fumes not only pose health risks, they create “green house gases” that attack the ozone layer.

Bibliography Bottled Water: Timeline © 2009 St. John's University This website tells us about the timeline of the water bottle. http://www.stjohns.edu/academics/provost/dialogues/water/water/history.stj How Are Plastics Made? This website tells us about how plastics and the water bottle materials are made. http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/funexperiments/quick/plastic.html Plastic Water Bottles Not Being Recycled This website talks about global warming and how water bottles contribute http://www.consrv.ca.gov/index/news/2003%20News%20Releases/Pages/NR2003-13_Water_Bottle_Crisis.aspx