Plastic water bottle advertising campaign from Brita

A currently running advertising campaign from Brita, a German company that specializes in water filtration products, says in its ad slogan that “last year 16 million gallons of oil were consumed to make plastic water bottles.”

Brita wants you to stop using water bottles and instead use their water filters to clean their water. While you can ask yourself what use the water filters will do, when the majority of the developed countries have an excellent quality on their water, the advertising campaign highlights one of the most pointless waste products in our society today.

Americans send about 38 billion water bottles a year to landfills. Considering the 1.5 million barrels of oil needed to make those bottles, the environmental impact of plastic bottle waste is truly staggering.