Bottled Water is neither Cleaner, nor Greener

As I was looking on the web for some information about bottled water, I stumbled on to this article. I feel that there is a bit more to building a green project, than products or services. I believe its a “Life Style.”  Wanting to do our part as individuals, check out this article below, and you will see why!  It might just make you think twice about “Bottled Water.”

Last year Americans spent nearly $11 billion on over 8 billion gallons of bottled water, and then tossed over 22 billion empty plastic bottles in the trash. In bottle production alone, the more than 70 million bottles of water consumed each day in the U.S. drain 1.5 million barrels of oil over the course of one year.

Ban The Bottle

Though the sale and consumption of bottled water is still on the rise, certain policy makers and activists have taken steps to reduce it. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order in June that bars city government from using city money to supply municipal workers with bottled water, and New York City, where residents consume nearly 28 gallons of bottled water each year, launched an ad campaign encouraging residents and tourists to forego the bottled beverage for the city’s tap, long considered some of the best water in the country. Even upscale eateries in Boston, New York and San Francisco have taken bottled water off the menu, offering filtered tap instead.
Improve Your Health
Not only does bottled water contribute to excessive waste, but it costs us a thousand times more than water from our faucet at home, and it is, in fact, no safer or cleaner. “The bottled water industry spends millions of dollars a year to convince us that their product is somehow safer or healthier than tap water, when in fact that’s just not true,” says Victoria Kaplan, senior organizer with Food and Water Watch, a nonprofit that recently launched a Take Back the Tap campaign to get consumers to ditch bottled water. “As much as 40 percent of bottled water started out as the same tap water that we get at home,” she adds. A 1999 Natural Resources Defense Council study found that, with required quarterly testing, tap water may even be of a higher quality than bottled, which is only tested annually.

Water aside, the plastic used in single use bottles can pose more of a contamination threat than the water. A safe plastic if used only once, #1 polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE) is the most common resin used in disposable bottles. However, as #1 bottles are reused, as they commonly are, they can leach chemicals such as DEHA, a possible human carcinogen, and benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), a potential hormone disruptor. Also, because the plastic is porous you’ll likely get a swill of harmful bacteria with each gulp if you reuse #1 plastic bottles.

Noting that the federal share of funding for water systems has declined from 78 percent in 1973 to 3 percent today, Kaplan urges consumers to “support public policies that promote safe, affordable, public tap water for future generations.” Visit www.foodandwaterwatch.org and take the pledge to take back the tap, promising to choose tap water over bottled whenever possible and to support policies that promote clean public tap water for everybody. And meanwhile, invest in a safe, reusable bottle.

http://www.thegreenguide.com/food/buying/tapped-out/1