Want to help the Enivronment? No Bottled Water!

[The_Professor]

Pour the bottled-water trend down the drain
Turn on the tap and quench your thirst with pure water, not wasted oil
COMMENTARY
By Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 9:51 a.m. ET Aug 3, 2007

Why is anyone who cares about the environment drinking bottled water? Yesterday, I went out for lunch at a trendy Philadelphia spot. The city has a very hip and environmentally conscious restaurant scene.

Just as is true in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, the city?s menus boast that there are no genetically engineered grains or vegetables. Most things being served are grown relatively locally and the chickens that appear on plates have ranged freely and happily before being turned into dinner.

One thing you quickly notice in fancy-pants establishments such as this is that despite all the attention to the political correctness of the food, everyone drinks bottled water. Philly bistros are awash in fizzy water from San Gimignano in Italy, still waters from French springs, mountain water from Norway and water that is supposedly captured from the waterfalls of Fiji.

So at this fashionable eatery, I asked for tap water. Eyeballs rolled, but I was right in my request. Why? Because it?s time for those of us who care about the environment and are concerned about global warming to stop buying and drinking bottled water.

Droplets of truth
Not too long ago, critics of Al Gore were prattling on about how his daughter had served Chilean sea bass ? a rare fish ? at her wedding reception and that Gore had eaten it. Well, protecting the fish may be a nice thing to do, but it does not make a difference to the problem of global warning and the even bigger problem of handling the enormous amount of waste humanity is dumping into leaky landfills. If you want to head out on hypocrisy patrol among the environmentally concerned, don?t worry about what they are eating or whether they fly, drive or walk from place to place. Just ask them, ?What are you drinking??

Here are a few facts about bottled water:

The containers are made of plastic or glass. When full, both become very heavy. It costs a fortune in oil to ship heavy bottles around the country, much less around the world.
Close to 2 million tons of plastic was used to make bottles for water last year. That manufacturing involves an enormous about of petroleum, since it is a key ingredient in plastic. In the U.S. alone, 30 million bottles a day, billions of bottles a year get tossed out. Recycling them costs another small fortune in gasoline to haul them to plants.
Bottled water is being promoted all over the world by a host of companies such as PepsiCo, The Coca-Cola Co., Nestle and Cadbury Schweppes. These companies, plus the boutique outfits such as Evian and S. Pellegrino, are staking their future on getting you to drink water from bottles since it is getting harder and harder to persuade you to drink soda and other sugared water from their cans ? and it?s working.
According to Beverage Marketing Corp., a provider of beverage-related data, consumption of bottled water has been growing by a gallon a year per capita in the U.S., and consumption has doubled in the past decade. Americans now drink more water from bottles overall than any other nation. However, we are only tenth among nations of the world in drinking bottled water per capita, trailing Italy, Mexico, Spain, France, Germany and Switzerland.

Then there's the cost. Why pay dollars per gallon for bottled water packaged with a fancy name and aesthetically impressive label when you can get pure and healthy New York City, Seattle, Boston, Geneva or Singapore tap water for pennies without adding to environmental problems?

In other words, if you want to do something to really reduce global warming and cut down the earth?s pollution burden, stop buying bottled water. The containers mean oil in the shipping, oil in the refrigerating and oil in the recycling, not to mention the oil that?s also needed in the manufacturing of plastic bottles. That?s a whole lot of oil to quench your thirst in a most unethical way.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20095510/wid/18298287/?GT1=10334

[Plane]

How about haveing your own filter?

[Xavier_Onassis]

All you have to do is ask people WHY they think they need bottled water. They will always say that either tap water tastes awful or that they are convinced that it contains "chemicals".

In every part of the country, at any given time, there are sales creeps roaming the streets with dubious test kits that, according to them, will show that tap water is pretty close to poisonous, while it becomes perfect after running it through their marvelous and unspeakably expensive filter.

This just adds to the suspicion, along with the ancient John Bircher propaganda that Floridation is a Commie plot to poison us all.

Of course water itself is a chemical. Most of the time, if you simply let the tap water sit for a short time (1-2 hou8rs) the chlorine, which is the main thing you taste, will gas off and will no longer be tasted.

Strangely, water that is pure because it has been sitting in a deep hole for thousands of years in Fiji, in Source Perrier, or Iceland or some other exotic place has a "shelf life" of a little over a year printed on the bottle.

Water filters, like Brita, do improve the taste of tap water. They will also work marvels on cheap brands of Vodka (ie Popov), causing it to be more properly tasteless like Smirnoff, Absolut or Grey Goose. It is best to run the cheapo vodka througj the filter three or four times.

As a rule, bottled water is advertised as a way of communing with nature, not creating a need for greater and higher Mount Trashmores.

[Lanya]

I've never bought a bottle of water.  I drink iced coffee in summer and hot coffee all the rest of the time.

Water when I was a kid was served in aluminum 'glasses' that were faintly orange, pink, blue....
the water had sort of an aftertaste in those glasses.
I did notice when traveling to Florida that some water tasted like sulphur.    Not bad once it became coffee, though.