Scott Jangro wrote a nice piece today about how insanely wrong bottled water is. The most abundant resource on our lovely planet and we bottle it up to make a profit, burning fossil fuels along the way. Some of my friends would call me a Tree Hugger Scott, but I’m not that insane about it. I don’t even recycle much anymore (only because its too difficult in my condo and the building doesn’t have facilities for it. Yes I’m lazy too.).
But, what is the real cost of bottled water? Do a Google Search and you’ll find article after article about it. This article goes on to show how much impact bottled water has on the environment. I don’t know how accurate it is as I haven’t done my own research, but common sense tells me that bottled water does more harm than good, at least the way we Americans treat it. I’ll admit there are parts of the world where clean water is hard to come by, making bottled water a necessity. But we don’t (and shouldn’t) send them hundreds of cases of personal bottles. Five or ten gallon jugs please. You know, the reusable kind you send back to the company for reuse.
Bottom line. You pay $1.50 (sometimes more) for a bottle of something that you can find for free. Think about how much oil goes into the manufacturing of the bottle. Then how much to put the water in the bottle. Then to deliver it to you. Then to recycle it (if you recycle it). Starts to seem…insane?
Update: David Wilk from TurnToTap found this post and gave out some kudos for writing it (should thank Jangro since he got me thinking about it. I took a look at TurnToTap and there seems to be some good information there. Check it out!
We have all those facts and figures on our website which Scott referenced in his blog (www.tappening.com). The facts (disputed by no one including Coke and Pepsi) are that if you drink the recommended and advised daily allowance of water and buy bottled water, you will spend $1400 a year. If you get it from your tap it will cost you 49 cents a year.
The real and bigger problem is all the fossil fuels that have to be burned to make the plastic, fill the bottles, extract, filter, and purify the water, maintain the factories and warehouses, ship the millions of bottles, keep them cool at retail, and then process the waste — all for nothing, because the stuff in the bottle is no better than the stuff that comes right out of the tap!
And sadly (although to their credit, Coca Cola is working hard to change this), only 20% of what we drink is recycled.
Just get yourself a filter and a good re-useable water bottle!!! PLEASE!