http://www.care2.com/greenliving/get-off-the-bottle-and-on-the-filter.html
Get Off the Bottle and on the Filter
By Positively Green
Last year Americans spent 15 billion dollars on bottled water and the sales estimate for 2007 is 16 billion dollars. One can argue that it’s money down the drain because the truth has been watered down by some of the largest bottlers. About 24% of bottled water is just filtered tap water; like Aquafina and Dasani.
You can achieve exactly the same quality of water by installing a filter on your faucet at home. If the cost ($100 or less) of purchasing a filter for your home causes you to hesitate, consider this; you can buy a half-liter of bottled water for $1.35. If you filled this same bottle with filtered tap water once a day, it would take roughly 10 years before you spent that $1.35. However, if you purchased one bottle of water every day, after 10 years you will have spent $4,927.50.
GET OFF THE BOTTLE
Besides the incredible savings that you get with filtered tap water, there are environmental and socially responsible reasons that just strengthen the case for the tap.
Environmental Reasons - Plastic is a petroleum based product. The pollutants associated with the manufacture and transportation of these plastic bottles is unnecessarily damaging to the environment. Of the 50 billion plastic water bottles used last year, about 38 billion went straight to landfills. The plastic in those landfilled bottles is worth around $1 billion. 12 billion bottles were recycled, but remember that plastic doesn’t recycle into the same quality plastic. It can only be recycled a finite number of times before it can no longer be recycled.
Socially Responsible Reasons - Like other water from pristine ecosystems, Fiji bottled water is collected from natural sources and shipped halfway across the earth to the US where we already have clean drinking water in every home. Unfortunately, Figi doesn’t have a great public water system and last year Figians fell ill with typhoid casued by contaminated drinking water. When over 1 billion people in the world don’t have access to safe drinking water, buying bottled water with all its associated financial, environmental and social costs seems irresponsible – especially when a home filter gives you the same or better quality water than bottled water.
For more information or to subscribe at the introductory price of $10 a year, go to positivelygreen.com. Positively Green magazine launched in 2008 as a quarterly women’s magazine that covers every aspect of green from eco-friendly vacations to green fashion to green health. With articles that don’t just explain the problems, they outline solutions for busy people who want to make the change but don’t have the time to research solutions.
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16 comments
add your comment »I don't know how it is in the USA, but here in France the tap water contains a lot of chlore : which is not so good.
I was planning on buying a filter, but I read an article about it : it's not ecological, they haven't figured out yet what to do about the filters in the filter : they don't know where to recycle it. If you see what I mean. So what you can do is put some drops of lemon in the water and you don't feel the chlore anymore. Plus that the filter takes away minerals in the water that are good.
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I have a carbon filter I connect to the kitchen faucet. It gets rid of the chlorine. Chlorine is toxic so rather not drink it.
Why waste money and resources on plastic bottles? It should also be mentioned the fact that to transport them adds C02 which adds to global warming.
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I could never figure out why people buy plastic bottled water to begin with. As a child, I would hear my folks joking that everything is getting a price tag. "one day they'll find a way to put a price on water". Well they did. Now I see how many empty plastic water bottles sit in recycle boxes. This is an item that can be reduced, simply by investing in a filtration system...buying ONE bottle, and fill it with tap filtered water until the the expiry date on the bottle - then recycle. I re-use plastic for as long as I feel I safely can and also have a Brita water jug. By the way, the filters for the Brita last a lot longer than they state...as I have run tests on the filtered water, for up to 5 months after the so-called "expiry" date and the filters still remove city water cleansers. I feel bad that there are places who's water quality is so tainted, as to be deadly. Which, once more proves that we, as the little people have to band together and fight big corporations against abuses of our water supply and dumping toxins..be they in water, air or land.
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unfortunately many of us live in communities where the tap water is NOT good. we have septic, so our water smells and tastes weird. i only boil it and would never willingly drink it without first boiling it.
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NO NO NO! The US does not "have clean drinking water in every home." Don't you read the papers? Wells have been found unsafe in too many instances. (I remember when some neighbors in Northern Virginia found out there was rocket fuel in their well water). Even municipal water is sometimes contaminated. Just today I heard an NPR interview about Mycobacterium avium in city water. It builds up in showerheads and is resistant to chlorine! Also, the New York TImes has been running a series on "Toxic Water" and just reported that manure and even weed killers are contaminating drinking water. (See http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters.) And then there's Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria, which thrives in carbon filters and multiplies in plastic bottles! I'm not trying to scare your readers, but Care2 needs to stop spreading misleading information about drinking water. By the way, municipalities do not test for all contaminants in water, they test for a list of them and very few bacteria, often only e. coli.
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I just read an article from Food and Water Watch --fortunately they helped to win a case against Nestle who wanted to siphon off billions of gallons of water near Mt Shasta for their bottled water. But though they won there Nestle will be trying in other places. Corporate control of local water is devastating to local communities everywhere. I agree--buy a good filtration system for your home. We also carry a Brita pitcher with us when we travel for longer than a couple bottles will last--though it is not as good as what we have at home it is better than buying bottled water. Also of course do not buy and consume sodas, juice, or so-called energy drinks in plastic or cans. They are not healthy for you or the environment. The controversy over bottled water does not even mention the ridiculous amount of plastic bottles in the landfills and oceans coming from the use of this junk food.
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The importance of clean water is so important. My husband has had Parkinsons for 11 years. This is a progressive disease and I have done a lot of research and although they don't pinpoint the exact cause one theory holds that free radicals unstable and potentially damaging molecules generated by normal chemical reactions in the body may contribute to nerve cell death, thereby leading to Parkinsons disease.Oxidation is thought to cause damage to tissues, including neurons.Normally free radicals damage is kept under control by antioxidants, chemicals that protect cells from this damage.He was born and raised
in Tennessee on a cotton farm and there was a lot of pesticides that were sprayed, it was also well water. Pesticides and all sorts of nasty things running into the water..He has started drinking ionized(High Ph) antioxidant water and he has been feeling better and been able to have very good days! He was so impressed that he became a dealer for the water ionizer. Visit www.waterforyourhealthllc.com and read his sotry for yourself.
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I should think, unless you know there's a problem with your tap water you don't need a filter either. The tap water in my community is good and safe so we just drink it straight from the tap.
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I'm wondering about the comment about Fiji water. Is the bottled Fiji water the same as the water the Figian people drink????
Also, my friends who have had cancer have been told to drink Fiji water. I'm confused.
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This article, while well intentioned, has gross misstatements of fact or at least, oversimplification of facts. Yes, Get Off the Bottle! BUT, Desani and Aquafina are not "just filtered tap water." They and Deja Blue are ultra pure Reverse Osmosis water (forced through a membrane to remove any contaminents which are not water) and are virtually the new distilled water, but doesn't taste flat like distilled water. This is easily verifiable by using a TDS (total dissolved solids) Meter on your tap water vs the Reverse Osmosis water. A filter, while good, is simply not a Reverse Osmosis membrane.
There are several grades of Bottled Water as not all are RO water. Many are Spring Water and some ARE just filtered tap water. You need to read the label.
RO water is the best quality drinking water you can get and you may buy a unit for your kitchen sink and you may be able to hook it up to your refrigerator also. This is what Starbucks uses to make all their product and many grocery store chains use RO to make all their juices. RO may be used in your iron, to spot clean carpets, spot your clothes, all due to the fact it has been cleared of "contaminants" and has negative charges looking for positive ones to hook up with.
The WQA (Water Quality Association wqa.org) has a library addressing different water issues for consumers. You may also wish to visit Steve Lower's website www.chem1.com. He is a chemist who simply tells it like it is for water matters, just bec
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