The United States uses more than 17 million barrels of oil annually just to make water bottles. That amount of oil is able to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year. The energy wasted by creating bottled water could power

190,000 homes.

People in the United States use about 50 billion plastic water bottles per year, but only recycle about 2 percent, leaving 38 billion water bottles behind and more than a billion dollars worth of plastic wasted. A single plastic bottle takes more than 450 years to break

down completely.

Dr. Gina Solomon — a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council — states that there is no reason to believe that bottled water is safer than tap water. Most bottled water is simply purified municipal water. Yet, the price of bottled water is up to 500 times the cost of

tap water.

Reusable water bottles are better for your health because they are lead free and BPA-free. Paying $10 for a water bottle that will last at least a year is better than paying a dollar every time you want a bottle of water.

The Creighton campus has many non-reusable water bottles for sale. I would strongly encourage fellow students to realize how wasteful bottled water is.

It contributes to omitting toxins into the air, kills millions of birds, fish and other animals a year due to the non-recycled water bottles and uses more water to create the bottles than the water that will fill them. I urge you to use reusable water bottles.