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The myth and reality of bottled water
March 15, 2007

Three weeks ago, I started a part-time consulting gig in a large bay area networking company. Already I am drinking the bottled water provided by the company for free, out of sheer laziness. It’s just so easy to bring 3 bottles on my desk, instead of filling it up all the time. To jolt myself out of this habit, I decided to do a quick research on how bottled water adversely impact the environment. I’ve always known that bottled water is a scam (in that tap water quality is often better) and is bad for the environment. But how bad?

Let’s just say, the result from the quick research made me return the 2 unopened bottles to the company’s common kitchen.

Quick Facts:

• More than 1 billion plastic water bottles end up in the California’s trash each year, taking up valuable landfill space, leaking toxic additives, such as phthalates, into the groundwater and taking 1,000 years to biodegrade
• Just supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, enough to take 100,000 cars off the road
• Almost 1 trillion plastic water bottles are tossed every year around the world
• 5 trillion gallons of bottled water is shipped internationally every year
• The federal standards for tap water are higher than those for bottled water
• Bottled water costs 240 -10,000 times more than tap water

Hmmm, let’s see - we are spending money on water that is not as good as the free water out of the tap. By doing so, we also waste oil, increase pollution and landfill, as well as contaminate our future water source (think plastic bottle landfill). It does not add up, does it? So why the heck is the bottled water consumption increasing every year? I can only guess some of the reasons:

- Misconception: bottled water has better quality than tap water
* It is simply not correct. If you live in San Francisco Bay Area, you get the nation’s highest quality drinking water, primarily from the Sierra snowmelt. Every year the water is tested more than 100,000 times

- Going with the flow: everyone else is drinking bottled water, it never occurred to me to question
* It only takes one person to question and start a new trend

- Laziness: No need to refill it. Grab, open and drink
* It takes 15 seconds to fill a 16 oz bottle

- Rationalization: I recycle the bottle, so there is no harm done
* The reality of recycling is it takes energy to make the bottles first, collect the bottles, reprocess the plastic, and redistribute the bottles again.

I certainly have learned a huge lesson from doing a 1-hour research. No more bottled water for me. I have always been eyeing those cute Sigg stainless steel water bottles anyway…

CindyW

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