No Fan of Bottled Water

by: Pm - August 6th, 2007

I’m no tree-hugging hippie, nor am I a bleeding heart liberal. But, as someone who appreciates nature and loves spending time in the great outdoors (especially if that great outdoors happens to contain tiki’s, scantily-clad bikini-wearing babes, 8 foot waves, and end in “-awaii”), I hate to see people waste their money and the world’s natural resources on something that we can get for free from the tap: i.e., water.

Earlier today, msn.com ran a headline stating that Americans spend something like 12 billion dollars a year on bottled water. If my math is correct, that’s an average of $40.00/person/year on bottled water. At first blush, this doesn’t sound like much, but this quick calculation assumes that everyone in the country buys and drinks bottled water, which, believe it or not, many people do not. The reality is that a much smaller percentage of the population is guzzling bottled water and that these individuals are spending hundreds of dollars a year for little more than good-ol-municipal tap water. And why? Because the big soda guys have brain-washed us into thinking that if we’re not bloated with at least eight, 8-oz glasses of water a day, then you must be dehydrated (regardless of how much water you get from foods and other beverages). Please…

If the savings isn’t enough to get you to turn to the spigot instead of the refrigerated case, consider the environment. Literally millions and millions of pounds of new plastic and glass are made into single- or few-serving bottles. This directly and indirectly involves lots of petroleum. Petroleum is used by the boats, trains, and trucks that move materials and finished bottles around the country. Additionally, petroleum byproducts are a key component of the plastic used to make the bottles themselves. Then there’s the energy that’s required to power cooler after cooler of refrigerated single-serving bottled waters… What’s that? You recycle? Good for you; unfortunately, that doesn’t really solve the problem. Recycling is still in its infancy, so it’s inefficient, expensive, and burns a lot of petroleum. (Keep this in mind the next time that you complain about the price of gasoline)

In the end, the choice is yours, but unless I end-up in a 3rd World country, the county puts out a "boiled- or bottled-water only" alert, or I absolutely require the portability of bottled water, I’m sticking to good old municipal tap water.

Happy Heaving,

PM

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