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Complete 5 pages APA formatted article: Consumer Products: Bottled Water and Polyethylene Food Storage Bags, and Desktop Computer Monitors

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Complete 5 pages APA formatted article: Consumer Products: Bottled Water and Polyethylene Food Storage Bags, and Desktop Computer Monitors. The manufacture of consumer products contributes in a significant manner to the depletion of natural resources, since the production of consumer products depend to a very large extent on the bounty of nature like water, forestry, mining, and agricultural produce. Hence, consumer products and their use or consumption leaves a very large environmental footprint on our planet Earth (Keane, 2010, p.25). Evaluation of the history of humankind demonstrates that development of humankind has been linked with increased consumption of products. Since the industrial revolution in Europe, mass production came in to place to satiate the demand for consumer products, which was passed on to the European colonies, with particular emphasis on the United States of America. Greater economic strength has led to the developed world becoming the focus of increased consumerism (Stearns, 2006, p.40).

Tap water fit for human consumption is quite freely available, yet there is increasing use of bottled water, due to the lack of faith in tap water (Gelt 1996, np). For the production of bottled water consumed worldwide more than 1.5 million ton of plastic is needed for the plastic bottles in which the water is bottled. This plastic comes from the non-renewable resources of oil and natural gas. The manufacturing processes involved in the production of the plastic can be polluting to the environment and cause risk to human health. There are several ways in which Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is the plastic resin used most commonly to produce plastic bottles can be recycled, to reduce environmental degradation (Chong & Kim, 2007, np). Yet, recycling of plastic is not often done, and so plastic bottles are disposed off, causing serious landfill issues. Plastics are chosen for several applications because of their stability to degradation. This in turn causes plastics to have a very slow rate of degradation, thus constituting a long duration waste problem (Harper, 2002, p.14). In addition to the pollution issues with bottled water, there is concern on depletion of the water resources at the production sites of bottled water.