Making bottled water is also an extensive, resource-heavy process. Like other sources of plastic, the material in bottled water is produced from the byproducts of crude oil. Unlike other plastic materials that get reused over their lifetimes, plastic bottles are typically used once and then disposed of. A study in the journal Environmental Research Letters revealed that the plastic that went into the bottled water Americans consumed in 2007 came from the byproducts of roughly 32-54 million barrels of oil.