When I came upon this bit of information I was astonished and dismayed. Bottled water is not only environmentally bad, it is harmful to third world countries and its people as well.
This coming Monday, February 12th I will be doing a presentation entitled “10 Things You Can Do To Save The Environment And Protect Your Health” at the Rotary Club of Incline Village. My tenth item was about not buying bottled water anymore. Here are the major points. After reading it I bet you will never look at bottled water the same ever again.
- Let’s take the example of Fiji Water.
- It is transported 8,700 killometers from Fiji to San Francisco. Imagine the fuel used to transport the water and the bottles (it is bottled in Fiji).
- The bottles themselves use petrochemicals to manufacture and the plastic for the bottle is transported from China about 7,000 kilometers away requiring more fuel to transport.
- A bottle that holds 1 liter requires 25 liters of water in its manufacturing process (this includes power plant cooling water).
- Every bottle takes 1,000 years to biodegrade. More than 50% of the bottled water brands out there simply purchase U.S. municipal reserve water (your tap water) and filter it before bottling it. Then they resell it to you for an average of $5/gallon.
- Buy a water filter. You’ll save lots of money.
- One thing that should outrage every Rotarian especially.
Companies like Coke (Dasani), and Pepsi (Aquafina) have discovered that buying up the drinkable water from some third-world country, bottling their water source and shipping it to you to sell to the U.S., is less expensive than paying for water from the municipal reserve. And they’re buying up the ONLY drinkable water sources in some countries. - So every bottle you drink is not just at the expense of the environment, but also at the expense of another somewhere else, who doesn’t have any other water. And you do.
- Do you wonder why third world countries don’t like us?
Buying bottled water, unless you really need it should embarass you. It is unnecessary and bad for the environment and does nothing to make you any healthier than if you bought a water filter for your kitchen tap and filled a reusable bottle everyday. Come on America, stop being lazy and uncaring and change your habits. You will save money and make the world a better place.
4 responses so far ↓
Mark Schauss Blog: Never Boring, Always Provocative… » For the Environments Sake - Stop Buying Bottled Water // May 11, 2007 at 6:19 am
[...] When it comes to wasting reseources, there are few things that can highlight human folly than bottled water. As I mentioned in a previous post, buying bottled water, especially Fiji water, is a terrible drain on the environment. What is sad is many of the people who drink bottled water are the same people who want to protect the environment. Time to change folks. Here is an article from a Tasmanian on-line newspaper (I go to the ends of the internet world for my readers) that spells out how bad bottled water is for our world. Hopefully it will make you stop buying it. I did. [...]
Al Friend // Feb 20, 2008 at 7:22 am
I agree that bottled water in plastic is not healthy for the environment or for people. The phaltes in the plastic aren’t good for humans. But Mark Schaus is naive when he says that people can cheaply filter all the impurities out of their water. This is an argument that I’ve heard before. But the uithors are either unaware of the difficulty in filtering some toxins. There are some toxins, chemicals that can’t be filtered out without considerable expense and waste of water. Case in point is flouride which is highly toxic and carcinogenic. It can only be filtered out with reverse osmosis which is an expensive form of filtration that is questionable in it’s efficasy as the membranes on these units that do the filtering can easily foul without any ability to know if it has or not. Also, reverse osmosis wastes 2-3 times the amount of water that you wind up with, which is a definate environemental issue. Other issues at hand are the increasing residues of medications and chemcials that are polluting our waters. Also items like nitrates and nitrites cannot be filtered out wihtout RO or possibly distilling, if you can locate a reliable distiller, however in this case most distillers are made with stainless steel and other elements that can pollute the water as well. Stainless steel is not guarranteed to not leech into the water and contains many toxic heavy metals, particularly nickle. Certainly things like fiji water are excessive in their travel costs, but one solution for local/regional bottled water could be to use glass containers instead of plastic. I for one would pay more for a safer container. This last suggestion is perhaps not the best suggestion. The real thing to do is to get municipalities to address the increasing onset of pollution from industry, medicines and chemcials dumped down the drain, and toxic things like chlorine and flouride that the governemnt pretends is good for us. Environmental acitvists like Dr. Strauss need to include these insights when discussing the issues related to water and bottled water. The asnwer is not as simple as he states.
Mark Schauss // Feb 20, 2008 at 7:45 am
Mr. Friend,
While I appreciate debate here, I would like to make a few comments about your post. First off, reverse osmosis works better than you suggest. Secondly, my comments about bottled water was not strictly about the water but the use of petrochemicals to create the bottles, a major waste product. Thirdly, most of the bottled water is basically filtered municipal water which poses the question, why pay so much for something you can do for yourself at a much lower cost and more environmentally friendly. Fourth, I did not suggest everything is simple. This is a blog and not a full fledged book on the subject. Buy my book and look at the details. Also, my last name is Schauss not Straus or Schaus.
Buying Bottled Water in a Restaurant - Snobbery or Just Bad Idea? | Mark Schauss: Discussing Real Life Health Issues and More // Mar 4, 2008 at 10:09 am
[...] think about all that goes into getting that bottle of water to the store and your hands. Go to this post of mine to see how utterly ridiculous Fiji Water is when it comes to its carbon wasting [...]
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