In our society today many people are living not in actual caves, but in the sense of a cave like that in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”. Many of these people are not seeing the light, the many issues and problems the world is facing in today’s society. The one particular issue which desperately needs light to be shed on it is the issues of bottled water. Many people are unaware of the harms that the bottled water industry is causing towards our planet Earth, therefore making it a crucial factor that people must step out of the caves and see the light. The first issue regarding the bottled water industry is the negative effects that impact our communities in today’s society. It may come as a huge shock to many people to see that bottled water could have a negative effect on today’s society, but sadly, it does. The bottled water industry is a multi-billion dollar empire which is run by three large corporations: Coke, Pepsi, and Nestle (Tapped). Every year these corporations exploit communities in the United States by pumping water at no charge from these communities’ water supply, then turn it around and sell it for a profit. For example, Fryeburg, Maine, is a small town that has been a victim of Nestlé’s water pumping for the past decade (Tapped). Fryeburg citizens tried to stop Nestle from pumping, but it was no use as Nestle was too powerful a corporation to have restrictions placed against them. This is the same story for the many other communities throughout the country which are having their water sources degraded every year by these money hungry corporations. If this continues for a couple of more decades, these communities will no longer exist due to the lack of ground water. It is ironic how many people today would rather consume bottled water over tapped water because they believe the tap water is not safe to drink; in reality the bottled water is actually the tap water. People didn’t use to believe that there was anything wrong with tap water, but that all changed about two decades ago when these bottled water corporations started advertising their products. They put millions of dollars into advertising bottled water saying that it was more “purer” and “safer” to drink than tap water, and the people were sold on this idea, which eventually led to the high demands for bottled water today. As the demand for bottled water continues to rise, the demand for the production of plastic material continues to rise as well which is a very bad thing for many reasons. One big reason is that the production of plastic for bottled water takes a toll on the environment. For instance, of the 80 million bottled waters consumed daily by Americans, only 20 percent of them are recycled (Tapped). The rest are either sent to landfills which destroy more land by the day, or they are sent to our planets oceans, mainly the Pacific Ocean. There is so much plastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean that it even has a name, the North Pacific Garbage Patch. This enormous amount of garbage in the ocean is a huge hazard towards the environment because it is destroying most of the marine life and beaches in the North Pacific area. As many of the plastic containers go un-recycled, the demand