Monday, July 02, 2007

7 Facts You Never Knew About Bottled Water

Part 1 in a 2-part miniseries.

7 facts you didn’t know about bottled water (you can draw your own conclusions):


• Tap water is just as safe as bottled water. In fact, the U.S. government requires more rigorous testing on tap water than on bottled water. [1] [2]

• Bottled water is thousands of times more expensive than water from your faucet. [1]

• Terephthalate (PET) is the most commonly used plastic for making water bottles. PET is derived from crude oil. [3]

• Just in the U.S., 1.5 MILLION barrels of oil are used each year for tasks such as (but not limited to) making PET, transporting bottles and powering water bottle factories. [3]

2.7 MILLION tons of plastic are used to bottle water bottles every year. [3]

86% of water bottles aren’t recycled. [4]

• About 40% of bottled water starts as tap water. [5]


Sources:
Food & Water Watch [1]
NPR [2]
Earth-policy.org [3]
Seattle Post-Intelligencer [4]
NRDC [5]

For More:
Wikipedia: Bottled water (Environmental impact)
Bottled Water Report
5 Reasons Not to Drink Bottled Water
Bad to the Last Drop? What Else? Bottled Water!
Bottled Water - Good For Business Bad For The Environment
Bottled Water, Bottled Hype (part 2, part 3)


Click here to pledge to reduce your use of bottled water.

Thoughts on the World would ask if you use this information (on a blog), that you link back to this post. Of course, you will get a link under 'For More'.

3 comments:

Political Realm said...

I hate bottled water. I think it tastes too chemically, while tap water is more or less free.

Anonymous said...

This is curious, I work in front of a desk and in front of me there's a guy who tries... to Buy Cialis for cheap price, well is his job, when you work like that you really need to be eating all the time I try to avoid this because we all know how it ends I have been using the same bottle for water since I buy it, around 6 months ago and I drink water from that big bottles enterprises buy and it's the same crap I don't need to buy water everytime it's empty and I don't get fat ;D
Thanks

K3M6

Mike Kowalsky said...

I love this topic because I have a friend of mine who tells me that bottled water is so much safer than tap water and I tried to tell them that most (actually about 40%) bottled water comes from the tap. I maintain a blog about environmental issues so I'm always on the lookout for real ways people can reduce their carbon footprints but in order to do that, I have to first combat the garbage information that is out there such as "… bottled water is better than tap water". Thanks.