Ditch the bottled water now
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
A typical American family consumes 26 gallons of bottled water a year and not only is that an awful lot of bottles when combined with the population number but also an awful lot of water that is being abstracted from precious sources or, simply, from the mains.
On the quest to live a healthy, low-impact “green” lifestyle, drinking more water is certainly a good thing but it stops being good when the water you are drinking is bottled water.
As said above, the average American family consumes 26 gallons of bottled water a year. Multiplied by 312 million people that is 8112000000 gallons of water and this would equal around 32448000000 bottles.
Annually, in the United States alone, bottled water generates 1.5 million tons of trash, which is produced by over 47 million gallons of oil. In addition to that most bottled water is not any purer than tap water by a long shot, and it costs more per ounce than does gasoline in the USA.
Instead of buying bottled water, whether in plastic or glass bottles, or the latest fad in cardboard cartons lined with plastic, switch to a reusable bottle like a stainless steel bottle or even reuse a glass one such a a Snapple lemonade one, and carry it with a protective cover.
You are not paying for purity when you are buying bottled water, despite the pictures of alpine springs. Most bottled water does not come from alpine springs. Much of it does not come from springs at all unless you count a municipal water source as a spring.
Tap water undergoes much more rigorous testing and has much stricter standards than does “spring” water and, in fact, many of those waters have been shown to have serious health risks involved, including microbes, parasites and even poisons and heavy metals, including arsenic.
If you do not like the taste of your tap water or you are worried about fluoridation of your water then get a filter. A simple jug filter with the Britta kind of cartridge will already remove most nasty things including chlorine, fluoride, lime scale, and even pathogens and bacteria.
The bottled water craze may be the best trick beverage corporations have pulled on us. Getting people to pay for something they already have is great business, but it’s bad for the environment, your pocketbook and your health.
Time to switch from bottled to bottle...
© 2012
