Posts Tagged ‘bottled water’

It is so funny to hear people talk about bottled water … Especially, because I was one of the largest consumers of bottled water. That was all I drank … all day long. My largest monthly expenses were probably my house, car, food and then water. After hearing about all the misconceptions about bottled water and reports that it is not as clean as we think it is, I decided to make a change. Now that my huge monthly expenditure of bottled water was going away … I invested in a reverse osmosis and Klean Kanteens for the family. Let’s just say that this tip on going green has saved me a tremendous amount of money. Americans currently spend over $8.6 billion dollars a year on bottled water.

One big misconception is that bottled water is safer than tap water. That is not necessarily the case. In the United States we have some of the safest tap water in the world. As much as 40% of the bottled water sold in the United States in just filtered tap water anyways. If you check the labels on the water you buy, look for “municipal source” or “community water system”. Plus the EPA sets much more stringent quality standards for tap water than the FDA does for bottled stuff.

One big reason to stop drinking tap water is the expense. Tap water costs about $0.002 per gallon compared to the $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon charge for bottled water. If we spent that much money on our tap water, we would be looking at a $9000.00 monthly water bill. Most of us are spending more on bottled water than we spend on gas per gallon for our cars. People were terrified when the price of gas was over $4.00 a gallon, but have no problem paying more than that for something we can get right out of our sink.

Did you know that 88% of empty plastic water bottles in the United States are not recycled? The Container Recycling Institute stated that plastic water bottles disposed of (not recycled) are at the rate of 30 million bottles per day. That is an astounding number of bottles that enter our landfills. Here is the crazy part … it would take 450-1000 years for a plastic water bottle to biodegrade … BUT … if it enters the landfill it does not have the sun and air to decompose, so it will be there forever.

According to the NRDC … City tap water can have no confirmed E. coli or fecal coli form bacteria (bacteria that are indications of possible contamination by fecal matter). FDA bottled water rules include no such prohibition (a certain amount of any type of coli form bacteria is allowed in bottled water). 
 Any violation of tap-water standards is grounds for enforcement — but bottled water in violation of standards can still be sold if it is labeled as “containing excessive chemicals” or “excessive bacteria” (unless FDA finds it “adulterated,” a term not specifically defined).

There are many studies concerning the evidence of Bisphonel a (BPA) found in the water from plastic water bottles. The plastic bottles can leach chemicals into the water if left in the sun, heated up, or reused several times. You can read on the side of some water bottles and it will say “one time use.” Did you know that it takes about 17.6 million barrels of oil (not including transportation costs) to meet the needs of bottled water? That equals the amount of oil to fuel one million vehicles in the United States each year.

So the question is … Are you going to continue to drink bottled water?