Currently, water resources are rapidly depleting and being polluted in various ways. This condition is alarming and is increasingly becoming a major problem. This study focuses on antibiotics, a group of water pollutants whose use is increasing continuously. A significant amount of pharmaceuticals enter our food chain through irrigation and seafood. The intact antibiotic molecules themselves and their metabolites in water resources are causing harm to the human body and the ecosystem. Additionally antibiotics in water contribute to the formation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, rendering these antibiotics ineffective in treating bacterial infections. According to statistics, Turkey is the highest consumer of antibiotics in European countries. Although the use of non-prescription antibiotics was banned in 2014 to reduce consumption, the decrease in the rate is not sufficient. This study focuses on Istanbul, Turkey’s largest and most populous city, examining the consumption of widely used beta-lactam antibiotics. Beta-lactam-containing drugs constitute 66.7% of total antibiotic use, with 34.2% being penicillins and 32.5% being cephalosporins, carbapenems, and monobactams. There are 55 wastewater treatment plants on the European side and 35 on the Asian side of Istanbul, treating 6,207,365 cubic meters of wastewater daily. The presence of residual antibiotics in treated effluents from treatment plants indicate the inadequacy of current wastewater treatment systems. Preventing the emergence of resistant bacteria by an interdisciplinary effort, reducing residual beta-lactam antibiotic levels in aquatic environments, calculating their impact on the ecosystem, and developing advanced treatment technologies to remove these micropollutants from water are crucial.