Aquafina claims to sell pure, refreshing drinking water- however, it has terrible effects on our populations and country. 

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) concluded that “On average, a liter of bottled water included about 240,000 tiny pieces of plastic. About 90% of these plastic fragments were nanoplastics”.  Nanoplastics are unintentionally created plastic particles falling in the size range of 1 to 1000 nm.  When there are nanoplastics in single use plastic water bottles, the water we consume from them can have harmful effects on our physical health.  Research from the 2024 PlastChem project shows “about 16,000 chemical additives are used in making plastics…4,200 of these are known to be harmful to human health and/or the environment, and even more have not been studied”.

Human health effects are just one of the reasons I believe we need to change the materials used in plastic water bottles.  Another reason Aquafina must change their water bottle material is because plastic water bottles are harming our planet at a high rate, which creates a need for sustainable solutions.  Research from Beyond Plastics, a grassroots environmental policy organization working to stop plastic pollution, shows that “Each year, 20 billion to 30 billion pounds of plastic enter the world’s oceans”.  

Although this plastic comes from other products besides water bottles, single-use plastic water bottles greatly contribute to this amount of ocean plastic.  We must stop utilizing single use plastics in products such as water bottles and replace them biodegradable products to combat effects of pollution, such as the spread of microplastics and organismal ingestion of plastic particles.  Again, I urge Aquafina to stop manufacturing single-use plastic water bottles because of their prominent harmful effects.