World Water Day – it’s a huge issue and is there anything one person can do to tackle such a big issue? Yes, and it’s an easy one: step away from the bottled water and go watch a movie.
We are in tough economic times and there are people all around the world unable to find safe drinking water, yet here we are spending billions of dollars on bottled water when we can get it for just pennies out of our tap. And the big surprise: bottled water may not be any safer, cleaner, or more pure than tap water.
On top of that, the energy costs that go into making the plastic bottle and shipping it either across the country or even across the globe (for those who love water from Pacific Island nations) are incredible. One study showed that bottled mineral water is responsible for more than 175 times more primary energy consumption, almost 170 times more crude oil use, and over 200 times more greenhouse gas emissions than tap water.
And since the vast majority of plastic bottles are not recycled, that plastic bottle you drank from for 5 minutes, ends up in a landfill for thousands of years.
For even more information, you can check out my testimony before the Senate on all the problems with bottled water.
But for something way more fun, you should check out the movie “Tapped” that goes through all of these issues and more. This is a great movie and is jam packed with information about why we need to stop our love affair with bottled water.
Also, our friends at Corporate Accountability International are working to get state governments to stop wasting precious tax money on bottled water. Like I mentioned earlier today, we can use all that money to fix our drinking water infrastructure and create jobs to boot.
So, as you go about your day today, think about how lucky we are to have some of the safest water in the world coming out of our tap. And think about how silly it is to throw good money away to buy a bottle of water.