LiveGreen: Hit the bottle

The New Year always seems to bring about resolutions, many surrounding health. Hydration is an important aspect, and bottled water seems like an easy solution. But before you buy that bottle, consider:

• Bottled water is 3,000 percent more expensive per gallon than tap water.
• The federal government requires far more rigorous and frequent safety testing of municipal drinking water. Bottled water generally is no cleaner, safer or healthier than tap water.
  • Up to 50 percent of all bottled water comes straight from the tap with no extra filtering.
• Bottled water samples have been shown to contain phthalates, mold, microbes, benzene, trihalomethanes, arsenic and even pieces of plastic.
• It’s worse if that plastic bottle is heated (left in hot car, for example). Heat helps to leach synthetic chemicals (see above), which have been linked to cancer and promote bacterial growth that can be passed on to you and negatively affect your health.
  • Bottles are not shipped in refrigerated trucks, so there’s no way to avoid the risks.
• It takes 17 million barrels of oil to make the bottles to meet America’s annual bottled water consumption. That’s enough to fuel more than 1 million cars for a year.
  • That same process also emits 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
• Only 14 percent of plastic water bottles get recycled. That mean 86 percent go to the landfill or become litter.

And none of these stats pertain to other plastic bottle beverages. When you consider pop, juice, sports drinks and so on, the effect is staggering.

Sadly, there’s more.

The world spends more than $100 billion a year on bottled water, which gives some corporations incredible power. They work through governments to privatize water sources. This is so prevalent it’s contributing to worldwide water scarcity. Occupants of Third World countries may be forced to walk for a day to get water clean enough to drink and/or are left without a basic human necessity. We are affected too. Companies are taking water from streams and springs, even in drought-stricken areas, draining crucial resources and leading to increased pollution.

So, what can you do?

• Don’t buy anything in plastic bottles.
• Instead, buy a reusable bottle (stainless steel or glass is the healthiest choice) and fill it with tap water. Buy a filter if you need to.
• Order carafes of water with reusable glasses at your next event.
  Refuse plastic-bottled beverages at events and parties.

• Educate yourself and others, starting with this video.