premise: The phenomenon of bottled water has given rise to the creation of a billion pound industry. The cost of bottled water can be up to 10,000 times higher than that of tap water. However, a reported 53 billion gallons of bottled water are consumed each year. This is a shocking figure, when considering the fact that much bottled water is actually from municipal water sources; in other words, taps. In addition, the process of bottling and transporting the water can have detrimental effects on the environment. Last year over 16 million barrels of oil were used in the production of bottled water. This is enough oil to fuel over half a million cars for an entire year. Finally, statistics suggest that only one in six plastic water bottles are recycled. In this way, the bottled water industry can be seen as not only overly expensive for consumers, but also as damaging for the environment.
hypothesis: The oil from last years production of bottled water could fuel 500,000 cars