Image of two million bottles of water - the amount Americans drink EVERY FIVE MINUTES. from http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7
Ever hear the joke about a new mesiah named Evian? he turned water into really expensive water.
It was a clip from an ad on the tube last night: why buy oil, ship it all the way over here to turn into plastic bottles, fill the bottles with water and sell the water, only for that plastic to end up on a landfill?
No kidding. The cost of drinking responsibly is so low: get a bloody bottle. We're spoiled for choice: stainless, colored stainless, polycarb, squishy, suction or pour.... Are we immoral if it's not a choice we're willing to make?
Yes, in case any of us have forgotten, plastic is an oil-based product. So is any of our high tech clothing, but at least that lasts more than five minutes to chug down filtered high price tap water.
So i've written before about the need to stay hydrated - drink three or four bottle fulls a day - don't rely on taste. Most of us go around sleep deprived and dehydrated. No need for at least one of them: fill the bottle, empty the bottle. But staying hydrated by buying bottled water is worse than taking the elevator down four flights.
In other words, what's the cost of all these disposable bottles? the cost of raw materials, of transporting them, of energy to convert the materials into bottles, to fill with filtered water, the cost of those same basic materials, refined differently to transport these heavy little capsules, the energy cost of storing them "cold" and dumping them out from a dispenser. What's the problem? when did we get so paranoid about tap water? when coke started bottling it? EU has some of the highest international standards for tap water anywhere. Even on what a person pays for a bottle (you pay 1000x's more for it than tap water which isn't even metered in homes in the UK).
And as for the water from the spings argument? First, most bottled water is just filtered water (reverse osmosis) from the tap. Second, where it is shipped from Evian or Malvern or anywhere else, the same questions about costs of components apply, and so what? do you care when you're getting onto a train where that bottle comes from or is it that there's buy one get one free; only 20p with a copy of the Independent.
This may be the new "drink responsibly" - ban the frickin' bottle - the bottled water bottle that is.
Drinking responsibly is an easy and cheap way to feel good about yourself:
at work get a stainless steel water bottle. For travel or the gym where you may want to protect your teeth, you may need to get a long lasting polycarbonate, but you can look for a recyclable type there. Here's some info on these types. Keep the bottle at work and use the installed filtered taps available in most kitchens/kitchenettes, or keep the bottle in your pack. Empty it weighs almost nothing; full, not much more. On campus there's no excuse not to skip the landfill, is there?
The message is still the same: hydrate or die, but at least we can do either without leaving such a big energy hole in our wake.
Happy Hydrating.
update march4, 2008:
if you do a google search on banning bottled water you'll see an increasing number of hits on both cities and groups that are getting behind questioning the cost of bottled water. So, you ain't alone.
