Bottled Water
And Its Impacts …
In the last few decades, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle and other big beverage companies have spent millions of dollars making us afraid of tap water. They’ve told us that if we want to be sure what we drink is pure and clean we should buy bottled water. But according to Annie Leonard (Director, The Story of Stuff Project), there are a few “inconvenient truths about bottled water we should know about. Here are some excerpts from her March 2010 article written for the Huffington Post:
- Bottled water is subject to fewer health regulations than tap water. In 2006, Fiji Water ran ads bragging that their product doesn’t come from Cleveland, only to have tests show a glass of Fiji water is lower quality than Cleveland tap. Oops!
- Up to 40% of bottled water is filtered tap water. In other words, if you’re concerned about what’s in your tap water, just cut out the middleman and buy a home water filter.
- Each year, according to the Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick, making the plastic water bottles used in the U.S. takes enough oil and energy to fuel a million cars. And that doesn’t even include the fuel required to ship, fly or truck water across continents and state lines.
- Three-fourths of the half-a-billion plastic water bottles sold in the U.S. every week go to the landfill or to incinerators. It costs our cities more than $70 million to landfill water bottles alone each year, according to Corporate Accountability International.
The Story of Bottled Water
by Annie Leonard
[print_link]
