Our country is having a bi-polar moment with regards to bottled water.

On one hand Americans love their bottled water. Each year our consumption of bottled water rises about 10 percent. Last year alone Americans gulped down 8.3 billion gallons of bottled water, and spent $11 billion along the way.

On the other hand, Americans are starting to think outside the bottle, and recognize how potentially wasteful and expensive drinking bottled water can be. Studies show that eight out of 10 plastic water bottles end up in landfills (not recycling bins) each year. Add to that a little fact that consumers seem to forget–plastic is made from petroleum, meaning that the chilled bottle of water that you just pulled out of your gym’s refrigerator case came from a ton of fossil fuels. The Pacific Institute estimates that it took 17 million barrels of oil last year to make plastic water bottles. That doesn’t really whet your appetite for a cold, prepackaged bottle of water, now does it?

Enter the bottled water industry, which is trying to make the best of both worlds–get people to continue drinking bottled water but make it appear to be a green thing to do. What got me thinking about this was the recent news that Burger King has kicked Pepsi-Cola’s Aquafina to the curb in favor of Nestle waters’ new “eco-friendly” bottled water called Pure Life. According to Nestle these bottles are better for the earth because they are made using a thinner layer of plastic that doesn’t require as much petroleum, and because of this, the bottles are easier to recycle.

OK, so good for Nestle for trying to make a step in the right green direction but that doesn’t solve the problem of people not recycling their plastic water bottles, does it? Thin, easier-to-recycle plastic or not, if most water bottles end up in the trash, then we haven’t really solved any problems in the long run, have we? (By the way, Coke isn’t getting off easy these days: the Tappening campaign plans to deluge Coke’s headquarters with one million plastic water bottles when the new CEO takes office later this year.)

Here’s what I’d like to see: fast-food restaurants taking a page from coffee shops. I’m thinking of the ones that let you bring your own reusable and refillable coffee mug into the shop, and then they reward you by giving you a discount on your Joe because you saved them from using a cup. Why can’t I bring my reusable water bottle with me to a restaurant and use it to hold my soda or, gasp, tap water? And why can’t the Burger Kings and McDonald’s of the world reward me for doing so?

In the meantime, save yourself the dough with bottled water (which is three times as expensive as gas these days), and just don’t buy it. Instead, invest in a reusable water bottle, such as the “Filter for Good” bottle from the people at Nalgene and Brita water filters, and take it with you everywhere. If you don’t like the taste of your tap water, put a filter on the faucet or get one of those filtered water pitchers that you can fill and keep in the fridge, thus giving you fresh, cold and free water whenever you’re thirsty.