Comparison of Metal and Plastic Bottles - Essay Example

Can giving free metal bottles be considered sustainable? Giving free metal bottles is sustainable and environmental friendly. Individuals can use metal bottles in different manners. However, disposal of metal bottles will have no harmful effects on the environment. It is easy to acquire bottled water from a water cabinet anywhere. One needs one steel bottle to use on day-to-day activities. All he/she requires is to refill the bottle with water or any other liquid content. Metal bottles have a variety of benefits, unlike the typical plastic bottles. The metal bottles are more durable than plastic bottles. They promote a healthy environment, unlike plastic bottles, which are recycled leading to cancer issues. Metal bottles provide better insulation to the contents inside, and they are dishwasher safe, unlike plastic bottles. In most occasions, metal bottles are sustainable. The paper adopts the thesis, giving free metal bottles is sustainable and environmental friendly. Most disposable water bottles like for Aquafina and Dasani are made of plastic. Some users attempt to decrease the throw away of plastics by washing them and reusing them. However, the use of bottles made of plastic is not sustainable. Bottles made of plastic are not long lasting. They cannot withstand cleaning and reuse without losing their nature. Plastic bottles wear out after some use, cleaning, and reuse. Unlike metal bottles, they are prone to wear and tear. Therefore, they require constant recycling, which can also lead to environmental population in recycling industries. Recycling process requires various activities that involve movement of recyclable plastics to recyclable industries. In the recycling industries, there are various activities, which require the use of heat. Therefore, recycling of plastic is expensive harmful to the environment. Plastic products come with resin code adopted in 1988 by the Society of the Plastic Industry. The code gives an industry-wide standard for identifying and sorting recyclable plastics. Plastic products have only seven resin codes. However, there are thousands of unique types of plastic. Diverse combination of additives and dyes add basic resin to give desired shapes, texture, and colour to the final product. The variations in the manufacturing procedure lead to dissimilar melting points and properties within a resin code. Plastic products require careful sorting before turning them into other types of products. Combination of diverse kinds of plastics makes plastic products useless for manufacturing. Technology exists for recycling many types of plastics. However, the lack of infrastructure prevents widespread recycling of most plastics. Collection of plastic bottles is expensive as plastics are light yet bulky and thus cannot be effectively collected. Furthermore, most plastics are prepared of petrochemicals, essentially natural gas and oil, and therefore they are mostly unrecyclable. Plastics made of polyethylene terepthalate (PET) are only recyclable. The existence of additives like colorants, fillers, reinforcements in plastics complicate recycling. Therefore, most industries prepare developing virgin plastics over recycling. The justification for use of virgin plastics due to health issues also reduces the market of recycled plastics. The production of virgin plastics fills the environment with unwanted substances. Furthermore, the production of unused plastics is unsustainable in the wrong run as would require raw materials like oil and the nature gas, which are unsustainable. The use of metal bottles, unlike the use of plastic bottles, is more sustainable. A user can wash and reuse a metal bottle for many years. Metal bottles are not prone to wear and tear as plastics. Therefore, unlike plastics, there is no need for regular recycling. Utilization of metal bottles eliminates waste. For instance, over 30 billion plastic water bottles are disposed of every year. Over 1 million barrels of oil are use to generate 30 billion plastics. Thus, the use of metals bottles would ensure sustainability of world’s resources. A large number of world’s resources would be safe either directly or indirectly. The reason most people and companies use plastic bottles is because they are light. They are easy to carry. Again, people are not required to carry them around, as they are disposable after they are used. They idea of disposability inspired the creation of certain disposable metal bottles. The impacts of disposable metal are almost similar to those of plastics bottles. Therefore, metal bottles should be created to last and not to be disposed. However, people ought to adopt the use of reusable metal bottles as they have many advantages to both the user and the world. Users would save a lot of money, as they would only be required to buy the product. Again, they can use a metal bottle for years. Plastics are damaged quite easily. They crack and are prone to damage by sun or heat. When plastics show signs of scratch or wear, they are unsafe to use. However, metals are durable and last long. In addition, metals, especially stainless steels are healthier. Plastics contain chemical like BPA, which can cause harsh health risks even in small doses. In the essay, Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer, Wendell Berry discusses the reasons he prefers the use of Royal standard typewriter to a computer. According to Berry, a typewriter does similar work as a computer yet it is friendlier to the environment as compared to a computer. A computer is reliant on strip-mined coal. Berry is a strong environmentalist who recognizes the impacts of his actions on the environment. By avoiding the use of a computer, he would in a direct or an indirect way eliminating the necessity of oil for production of electricity (Berry, 1994). In a similar manner, adoption of the use of metal bottles reduces either directly or indirectly the need for oil for the production of plastics, which end up polluting the environment. People need to understand the impacts of the actions and adopt the use of metal bottles other than the plastics once. Ginger Strand discusses in his essay how people in American have come to identify disposal of unwanted product with the protection of the environment (Strand, 2008). However, people ought to consider the wide impacts of their actions. Any consideration of the real impacts of plastics bottles might lead people to develop the altitude of Wendell Berry. It might make people adopt the use of metal bottles over the plastic once as even their helpfulness are similar; metal bottles are friendlier to the environment than the plastic one. In conclusion, metal bottles are friendlier to the environment than plastic bottles. Unlike plastic bottles, they are not prone to the wear and tear. Their usefulness exists for years. The unending helpfulness of metal bottles eliminates the need for more manufacture of new bottles. Again, it eliminates the need for recycling. Therefore, the use of metal bottles lead to direct or indirect conservation of the environment. They lead to the reduction of the need for raw material thus reducing the rate of consumption of non-renewable resources. Richard Heinberg’s fourth axiom states that the rate of usage of non-renewable resources must be declining in a way that is greater than or equal to the rate of depletion of a resource. The use of metal bottles is thus sustainable and therefore free giving of metal bottles is sustainable. Works Cited Berry, Wendell. "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer." Writing Sociology. 2.2 (1994). Print. Strand, Ginger. The Crying Indian. Orion Magazine 2008: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3642/.(Accessed 23 Oct. 2014). Read More