Search Results for: label/Green Living

I am on the email list for New American Dream, which is a pretty neat organization that talks about responsible consumption (i.e. combatting wastefulness in America). I enjoy reading their articles and features.

One came into my inbox today that I found extra interesting.

Bottled water is a hot topic lately. I’ve seen it in the newspaper, Internet and on the news. But, tons of people (and lots of our friends and family members) still buy lots of bottled water.

Ryan and I don’t drink bottled water. We have a Brita pitcher at home. I have a bottle that I bring to work to use. It just seems wasteful to buy bottled water all the time. And, we drink a lot of water. So, it doesn’t fit into the budget. So, it really is primarily a monetary issue. However, we do also try to live greener and do try to lessen our impact on Earth, so that makes it practical as well.

Here are five more reasons to consider breaking the bottled water habit and switching to tap water! (courtesy of the New American Dream) Some of these I haven’t heard before.
5. Disposable plastic water bottles are not meant for multiple uses. The #1 polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is fine for a single use, but reuse can lead to bacterial growth and leaching of dangerous chemicals.
4. Bottled water is full of oil. Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 cars for a year. (NY Times) To put it another way, the entire energy costs of the lifecycle of a bottle of water is equivalent, on average, to filling up a quarter of each bottle with oil. (Pacific Institute)
3. Bottled water is expensive! Drinking the recommended daily amount of water using bottled water can cost an average of $1,400 per year; drinking the same amount from the tap costs around 49 cents for the year. (NY Times)
2. Your tap water is fine to drink. Tap water is more highly regulated than bottled water and over 90 percent of water systems meet EPA’s standards for tap water quality. (If the taste or color is a little off from your tap, your pipes are probably at fault—a simple filtration system should do the trick to take both aesthetic problems away.)
1. At least 40 percent of bottled water is tap water anyway. That’s right: you are paying a huge premium on water that you could have just gotten from your tap in the first place. (Natural Resources Defense Council) You probably like tap water more than bottled water, too!

So, what do you think about the bottled water conundrum? Do you love bottled water? Could you give it up?