Bottled water clear, not green
By BARBARA FREDRICKSEN
Published September 8, 2007
Just as I think I'm doing my part to save the environment, something comes along to remind me that I have a long way to go.
Sure, I've always made a "to-do" list to consolidate household errands and save petrol. A year or so ago, I turned up my thermostat and put it on a timer (bonus: my electricity bill fell by more than one-third). I recycle newspapers and aluminum cans and use "weeper" water hoses instead of sprays whenever I can.
Then some articles in My Favorite Newspaper and The Week magazine tossed me a new curve ball - my wasteful, extravagant and silly habit of bottled water.
It's silly, because bottled water is often just plain ol' tap water that may or may not have been filtered. Worse, it's not required to be tested as often as tap water and sometimes has icky stuff in it that tap water doesn't have, albeit not to dangerous levels.
It's extravagant because even the cheapest brands of the individual bottled waters cost anywhere from 75 cents to $6 a gallon, which is about a thousand times the cost of water from the tap. The American Water Works Association calculated that in most places, you could get 450 gallons of tap water for the price of one bottle of Evian.
And bottled water is wasteful because it takes about 1.5 million barrels (that's 63-million gallons) of crude oil just to make one year's worth of plastic bottles in the United States alone, according to This Week - and that doesn't even count the shipping and distribution costs.
Then there's the leftovers. Only about a quarter of the used bottles are recycled, which means the rest go into the trash, or, from what I can tell, into the Gulf of Mexico, on the side of the road or to the bottom of my favorite rivers.
Bottled water makes sense when you're storing it for a hurricane and the municipal supply may be cut off for a while. And it's probably safer for people whose water supply comes from an untested water well or whose home plumbing is ancient and corroded. Or happen to have the misfortune of being customers of tacky water companies which shall go unnamed here.
The majority of us, though, are on nice, safe county or city water supplies, which is a different situation altogether.
A while back, I ran across a story about a Hawaii-based Japanese company that sells desalinated deep sea water for $5.50 a 1.5-liter bottle (about a quart and a half), touting its purity and mineral content.
Wouldn't it be more fun just to buy a nice little bottle of carefully distilled gin, pop a vitamin pill and have a party?
I do understand the bottled water phenomenon. It's easy to grab a bottle on your way out the door, and, admit it, a frosty bottle of water looks cool (especially that Fiji label) when you're out power walking or at the gym.
Even so, with a little effort, it could become just as easy to fill a bottle in a shoulder sling that you can wash out and use over and over.
Some cities are already starting a campaign against bottled water, including one I frequently visit - Salt Lake City, which has asked public employees to stop giving out bottled water at official city events. Since heat can get to people quickly, I'd like to see them combine that with a campaign to bring your own water in your own container.
Some say that the next big wars won't be over oil; they'll be over water.
The first skirmish seems to have already started, this one over how you carry that water around.