H2O. Two Oxygen atoms and one Hydrogen. Water is essential for all life as we know it (thus the search for water on Mars). So who thought it would be okay to filter it, put it in bottles, and sell it?
Bottled water may be convenient but at what cost? The plastic bottles water is sold in use a ton of fossil fuels to produce and transport. According to Pacific Institute, in order to make the plastic bottles to quench America’s thirst for bottled water, companies used “17 million barrels of oil last year – enough fuel for more than 1 million U.S. cars for a year – and generated more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.”
Dasani (Coca-Cola) and Aquafina (PepsiCo), the two top-selling bottled water brands, have both made clear that their water is essentially filtered tap water. Can’t we just filter and bottle our own water and save the cash?
Evian, Poland Springs, and other brands may actually use Spring water, but think about the cost of transporting that water all over the world.
“But isn’t bottled water cleaner than tap water?” you ask. No. As a matter of fact tap water is regulated on a regular basis by the government, whereas the laws on testing tap water are less strict. According to www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org, “tap water is tested far more frequently and has more independent oversight by state and federal environmental authorities (EPA and DEP).” As a matter of fact, companies are often responsible for testing the water themselves. I know I feel slightly brainwashed after hearing that companies spend tens of millions of dollars per year trying to convince us that bottled water is cleaner and purer.
