When was the last time you bought a bottle of water from a store? How much did it cost you? A dollar? Maybe two? How much would it have cost you to fill your own non-disposable bottle with tap water? $0.002.
Maybe you thought that with the pretty pictures of snow-capped mountains on the labels of these bottles, the water you purchased had to be from the clean, pristine streams of mountains from a land far far away and therefore worth the price. Sorry to burst your bubble. Nearly 40% of bottled water is simply filtered tap water. The bottled water industry is not only charging you almost two thousand times more for the water you can easily get from your running tap, but is also causing health problems for people who have to breathe in the fumes where these single-use plastic bottles are manufactured. Add that to the detrimental effect on the environment we have when we dispose of these bottles and they end up in landfills.
How is it then, that the average American drinks about 200 bottles of water a year? Convenience.
“I want water and I want it now.” so you walk into the nearest 7-Eleven to purchase one.
“I’m too lazy to carry my own non-disposable bottle around.” so you leave the house without one.
Well, i think the first step to change is to educate yourself with the facts. The Story of Bottled Water does a great job in 8 minutes explaining it.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0]
And if you’ve got time, catch the great documentary Tapped. I first saw it at the Talking Pictures Film Festival last year and was amazed by all the things about the bottled water industry i never knew. Think of it as the Food, Inc. movie for water.
And if you’re wondering now about which reusable bottle to get that’ll be safe, durable and eco-friendly, I highly recommend the stainless steel line from Kleen Kanteen. Not made from plastic, so you don’t have to worry about BPA leeching into your water. Not made from Aluminum, so you don’t have a liner that makes your water taste funky. Their factories practice fair labor standards, and 1% of all their sales go towards the planet. It’s a small sacrifice in convenience for a hundred times the benefit in return. Ditch that disposable bottled water today.
This entry was written as a part of Blog Action Day 2010, an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.
Shuling Yong 