Starting in 2011, the town of Concord in MA has banned the sale of bottled water in an effort to make their town more green.
Under the new law, the sale of plastic bottles that are not reusable will be banned. The sale of containers that can be refillable, such as aluminum or stainless steel containers, will still be available for sale. Those who opposed the law said that this would only lead people to buy more unhealthy options, such as soda or juice bottles. They claim that people will still buy bottled water, they would just buy it from other sources. All of these are very weak arguments, and we believe that given this incentive and education, people will start avoiding expensive, unsustainable bottled water.
Is the Price of Bottled Water Fair?
I'll be polite and answer with a plain "No!"
Most people do not realize the amount of money they spend on bottled water and the environmental impact of this decision. Take for example Coca-Cola's Dasani bottled water, which comes in 20 ounce plastic bottles and costs on average $1. You are paying 5 cents per ounce or $6.4 on the gallon. Compare this to the value of a gallon of tap water at approximately $0.006. That is, bottled water is sold by at least 1000 times its real value. Or, if you get fancy with imported water, it may be up to 10,000 times overpriced.
But isn't Bottled Water Safer and Better Quality?
That's simply false.
In theory the FDA is in charge of regulating the bottled water in the USA. However, 60 - 70% of all bottled water in the US never cross state lines and is therefore exempt from the oversight of the FDA. Tap water in the US has more oversight (by the EPA), being inspected on a regular basis for bacteria and toxic chemicals. Additionally, the EPA has more stringent rules than the FDA. You can easily check the tap water quality in your community.
Are There Any Alternatives?
water bottle filterOf course there are viable water saving tips and ideas. Say for example you buy an aluminum or stainless steel container (on average, they cost around $25 dollars). It costs you only $0.0012 dollars to fill it up, so by the 17th refill you will have paid for the bottle and by the end of the year you will have saved more than $600 dollars! You can have these great savings without having to give up great taste and convenience.
Most bottled water companies use great marketing and advertisments to make consumers believe their water comes from beautiful, fresh pools of spring water. This advertisment can be misleading. For instance, the water source does not always come from pristine water sources. Just to name a few, Dasani and Acquafina water bottles are just filtered tap water. Government estimates state that around 1/4 of the bottled water is actually bottled tap water!
What's the Environmental Cost of our Bottled Water Affair?
The environmental impact of making plastic water bottles is huge. It is estimated that more than 17 million barrels of oil were used last year to meet the demand for bottled water in the US. This is enough to fuel 1 million cars for a year! Additionally, water bottles create 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year, with only a 23% recycling rate. With the slow rate of decay of plastic, we are going to have to live with these plastic bottles for a long time.
Another overlooked source of waste is the water used to produce the plastic bottle. It is estimated that for every liter of water sold, a total of three litters are used in this process. In the US, an average of 246,375,000 liters of water are used in the production of bottled water every year, plus the actual water inside the bottles.
As can be seen, water bottles are dangerous for your pockets and for the environment.
We were brought up believing that is was better to drink bottled water because it was more pure and prestine than tap water. This has led us as society to depend on bottled water, importing water from remote places such as Fiji.
The bottom line is that the tap water is as good, and in most cases better quality, than bottled water. It costs a minimal fraction of bottled water, and it is not as harmful to the environment.
So why do we buy Bottled Water? The bottled water companies are just really good at marketing. Compare this to the reasons against buying it and it's clearly not worth it.
[via joingreenrevolution.com]
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