There's gold in them thar oil spills! Plastic gold, that is. Did you know that plastic is actually made from oil? Well, it is and that is bad news for the environment. In fact, eight percent of the world's oil production is used to make plastic water bottles. According to EU estimates, "...it takes a quarter of a litre of oil to produce a single one-litre water bottle." Wow, that is some oily water. As oil currently gushes into the ocean, again, it is worth taking a moment to reflect on how often we consume water from bottles unnecessarily. While bottled water is important for people who have poorly functioning water filtration systems, mostly in rural areas like the Central Valley of California and de-industrialized cities like Flint, Michigan, America has one of the safest water filtration systems in the world, especially in big cities, where a large chunk of the nation happens to live. So, why the obsession with plastic when it comes to consuming water? Some would argue that it is somehow healthier, but that is simply false. Water from the tap has important minerals in it like magnesium; after companies like Coke and Pepsi filter their water from the tap, those minerals are taken out. In other words, your bottled water is less healthy for you than your tap water. This makes sense considering the fact that Coca Cola and Pepsi have wreaked havoc on people's health everywhere they have gone. They break up unions and abuse their workers all the time. If they do not give a damn about them, then why the hell would they give a damn about your health? These are the same companies that advertise sugary drinks to kids in a nation plagued by childhood obesity for crying out loud. They do not care about you. They do not care about anything but money, just like every other successful corporation. But you recycle so it's all good, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. "80 percent of the plastic water bottles we buy end up in landfills. U.S. landfills are overflowing with more than 2 million tons of discarded water bottles. It takes up to 1,000 years for every single  bottle of water to decompose. Each bottle leaks harmful chemicals into  our environment along the way as it decomposes." (healthyhumanlife.com) So, even when it decomposes, all that happens is those chemicals go into the water so that you get a face full of toxins the next time you and the kids go on vacation. This is insanity. We can stop this today if we so chose, but we continue to be lazy and reckless with our planet nonetheless. Some have theorized this is going on because Hollywood spent years advertising bottled water in their movies, on TV and in commercials. Whenever you see a brand name product in a movie or TV show, you are witnessing what is known as product placement. They show you your favorite celebrities drinking bottled water so that you will buy more, and so that the CEOs of Coke and Pepsi can buy a fourth or fifth vacation home. "With staggering numbers such as 1 million plastic bottles discarded per  minute and 500 million plastic straws discarded per day or 40 billion  pieces of plastic cutlery discarded per year we must find innovative  ways to close the “tap”..." Cute joke there, but that will not help in the end if we do not start the trend ourselves. Hollywood will sell what consumers buy; they cannot be trusted to act responsibly because Hollywood is owned by corporations. We have to stop the waste ourselves by simply telling Coke, Pepsi and Hollywood that we will no longer support the production of such products with our money. If your tap water is safe do us all a favor and drink it before we all drown in plastic gold.