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.
READ LEAH ON HOME GOES STRONG
Hi there. Great article! I like all the links.
I would just like to add that instead of recommending people get a Brita filter and a reusable bottle, I would suggest they first have their water tested to see if they even need the Brita filter in the first place.
We had our water tested by using a simple Culligan test kit that I bought at Ace Hardware. Our water turned out to be fine with no traces of lead or other problems. So we fill our reusable bottles straight from the tap without any filter at all.
Brita filters are a problem too because they are made from plastic and in the U.S. and Canada they can’t be recycled. I’m working on a campaign to urge Brita (which is owned by Clorox) to take back and recycle these cartridges here.
Here’s a link to the posts on my blog about this issue:
http://www.fakeplasticfish.com/labels/Brita.html
Great article we have been going on for ages about refilling water bottled from the Tap in the UK and I invented a product that stops people buying traditional sodas and encourages people to refill water bottles! – have a look at http://www.wedrinkmorewater.com to find out – well done cheers
Jonathan
I should have clarified that we have a sink-mounted filter because we don’t like the TASTE of our water. We recently swtiched from well to public and, well, it doesn’t taste so great. Truthfully, I haven’t looked inside to see what the filter is made of and how undisposable it might be.
I’ll check out your link about getting Brita to recycle those filters. That’s a good point.
Jonathan: I will check out your wedrinkmorewater.com site, too.
I should also add that we recently got a soda club machine http://www.sodaclub.com/sodaclub.html that allows us to make our own seltzer and soda from tap water. We put it in reusable one-liter bottles that came with the machine.
Leah
Hi. I keep meeting people who’ve purchased the soda maker and like it. That’s great.
Yeah, the problem with Brita is that they sold out to Clorox, and Clorox is not interested in recycling the filters. I actually hacked one open with a hand saw one time in order to see what’s inside it. It’s just a simple carbon block. I don’t know why they have to make it so that you have to throw away the entire plastic housing with each cartridge. Apparently, the faucet system in Europe is different. You don’t throw away the whole plastic thing, mostly just the carbon.
Do check it out and let me know if you’d be interested in signing a petition or any other action to encourage Clorox to green their act, since they seem so interested in appearing green with their recent purchase of Burt’s Bees as well as some “green” cleaning products they have developed.
The best thing to do would be to scroll down to the end of the page and read from the bottom up.
Beth
I just don’t get and have never gotten the craze for bottled water. I am an avid water drinker. Maybe I am just a cheap stake, I refuse to buy something I can get at home for free.
Filtered bottle may be the route to take. I like my water cold, and our tap water tastes fine to me. The bottles are so convenient, so if I get a reuseable bottle…