Every day bottled water works its way further into our daily routines to the tune of Americans alone spending $16 billion on bottled water a year. This amounts to roughly sixty million empty plastic bottles being sent to the landfills every single day. If you need some reasons to kick the bottled water habit here are just a few.
In an age when nearly every day the prices of gasoline hits a new high that brings additional groans from consumers, we as consumers spend $1.29 on a small bottle of water without thinking twice.
To break that down into numbers for you the standard bottle of water holds 16 ounces. That means eight bottles of water make up one gallon. At $1.29 per bottle of water we are paying $10.32 per gallon of water. That amounts to about 3 gallons of gas and we pay it with a smile every time we purchase a bottle of water. How can we look with utter disdain at those Hummers driving by while we sip from our bottle of Evian water?
If you’re living in San Francisco where the water is supplied from inside the Yosemite National Park the water is pure enough that the EPA does not require that San Francisco filter it. You could refill that bottle of water you paid $1.29 for once a day, every day for over 10 years before it would cost you $1.29 from the tap.
If you’re thinking that it ends there you may want to consider some of the other impacts. I mentioned earlier about the sixty million or so plastic bottles that are being discarded to landfills every day. Filling up landfills with plastic bottles that leach contaminates into our soil while they take hundreds of years to degrade.
Manufacturing plastic costs us in other ways also. It is estimated that between 7% and 8% of the worlds fossil fuels are being used to manufacture new plastic accounting for millions of tons of fuel every year.
Think about this also as you scowl at those Hummers driving along the roads. How do you think that bottled water gets to the shelves and into your hand? Most of the popular brands such as Figi or Evian are imported from other countries and have to be shipped great distances.
You may also realize that water is heavy. It weighs 8 1/3 pounds per gallon which makes it so heavy you can’t fully load an 18 wheeler that is hauling it. They need to leave empty space. When our society is so concerned for energy consumption and the effects of global warming why are we transporting bottled water from Fiji, Italy and who knows where? All we need to do is give the tap a twist.
There is also a cost during purifying and packing the product. The water plant in Fiji is state of the art and runs 24 hours a day preparing and packing water. This requires an electricity supply that is uninterrupted. To make sure they have power the company supplies its own electricity with 3 large diesel generators. They say that the water comes from one of the last pristine ecosystems on earth, but the bottling plant is clouded in the haze of diesel fumes.
So here is how you can kick the habit.
The first thing that you need to do is get over it. Bottled water is not safer or better than tap water. Tap water has additional government oversight gives it less risk of any contamination. It costs only pennies per gallon and has fluoride additives to aid in the health of your teeth.
Next get a good filter you can use to remove any chlorine or minerals that may be in your tap water. This will make the taste from your tap nearly identical to bottled water. You should also get a bottle that you can reuse so when you’re away from the house you don’t have to purchase bottled water.
Mix up your water once in a while by brewing some iced tea you can keep in the fridge. You can also add some lemon juice, raspberries or fruit to a glass. Another suggestion would be to purchase some “to go” drink mix packs and mix them up in your reusable bottle.
Make use of the water fountains that are easily accessible in most areas and enact your own personal bottled water ban.
