Water bottles: Simple Convience or wasteful Hazard?

In Joshua Ortega's article for The Seattle Times: Water Wars: Bottling Up the World's Supply of H2O he argues that the growing use of water bottles in the nation and the world is dangerous. He brings out stats and factual information that establish credibility and hook the reader. He points out the dangers the plastic that goes into these water bottles present and describes the wasteful process that water bottles go through when being made. He comments on the lack of recycling and points out that because of all these billions of water bottles our landfills are filling faster than ever. Ortega uses his credibilty to hook the reader with solid facts, after which he describes dangers of the water bottle-drinking practice and moves smoothly into educating the reader on how each of us can make a change. Ortega's devices permit the reader to see evidence of the travesty of water bottles and helps us to realize and contribute everything we can do to help.

Ortega uses wonderful imagery as he portrays, for the reader, the gargantuan amount of water bottles used in this country and the small percentage of that number that is recycled yearly. Through his relatively short and simple writing style he creates a clear picture of an overflowing landfill that is bursting with bottles while the recycling bins have a few measly plastic containers in them. Towards the end of his paragraph he connects this neverending pile of trash with his previous argument about the fact that this water is actually more unhealthy than tap water. The effects of this imagery creates an emotion of disgust in the audience which was clearly the writer's intent. We, as a people, do not enjoy trash, hence, our blatant disdain for professions like janitor on garbage man. This argument that Ortega makes, appeals directly to the disgust we already feel for trash and garbage in general. The connection to unclean water just solidifies our agreement with him and pushes us away from any desire to partake of this unhealthy, trashcan-filler.