Vucub's opening statement - Plastic Water Bottles - Should they be banned?
Plastic water bottles are indeed wasteful. However, that doesn't mean that it is a good idea to ban them altogether. I personally believe that given the choice between tap water and plastic, people should choose tap water. However, that choice is not always an option.
I have recently myself experienced a lack of access to tap water due to a power outage. For several days, we were reliant on plastic water bottles, as tap water was not available. We don't use plastic water bottles under normal circumstances, but we were definitely happy to have them available during that time. Other parts of the country need this resource as well. Some areas of the country don't have access to clean tap water. Others deal with natural disasters such as hurricanes. Should they be deprived of access to water?
Banning plastic water bottles would not ban all plastic bottles either. Consumers would still be able to purchase sodas, energy drinks, and all the sugary things they like in plastic bottles. So why the ban on water bottles specifically? Plastic water bottles are only 3.3% of the beverage packing in landfills in the US. It would seem that this is only a small part of the problem.
And the ban doesn't neccesarily mean that all consumers that normally use bottled water would switch to tap. There are some people in the country who are very averse to drinking tap water (for some reason). These people wouldn't just drink tap water - they'd also drink more sodas and other drinks which you can get in plastic bottles. Aside from continuing to cause pollution and waste, this would lead to more obesity; already a huge problem in America.
The last reason we shouldn't ban plastic water bottles is simply that it restricts freedom of choice for consumers. Banning plastic water bottles would simply not be effective enough to justify the loss of choice.
While pollution and waste are huge and important issues, I don't believe that this is a very effective solution to either. If we really want to reduce plastic waste, we need to get consumers to make better choices - we need to convince people that they should drink tap water instead of bottled water when available. We need to convince people that they should carry reusable bottles. Banning plastic water bottles doesn't accomplish that much when consumers just buy other plastic beverages.