Smart Fish Friday
Ban bottled water, refill it with tap water, a great choice for the environment, saving money and possibly keeping you healthy
“We must buy the water we drink; our wood can be had only at a price” Lamentations 5:4
Over the last ten years we have seen a huge increase in the use of bottled water
- Bottled water market tripled over past 10 years
- Many people drink only bottled water even though bottled water is thousands of times more expensive than tap water.
- Worldwide the bottled water market was estimated to be more than $100 billion .
We have been sold a lie
“It struck me that all you had to do is take water out of the ground and sell it for more than the price of wine, or for that matter oil.” Gustave Levin, former Chairman of Perrier
“We sell water…so we need to be clever.” Jeffery Caso, former Vice-President of Nestlé. Advertising budgets run as high as $150 million Public water supplies deliver clean, safe, drinking water. Studies have shown that bottled water is no safer than tap water. Bottled water is actually less regulated than our public tap water . Making the plastic bottles for bottled water for sale in the U.S. required the equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil last year and generated 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
To visualize the entire energy costs of the lifecycle of bottled water, imagine filling each bottle with a quarter of oil.
– Each year, more than 4 billion pounds of PET plastic bottles end up in landfills or as roadside litter. Less than 20% of plastic water bottles are recycled.
– Up to 40% of bottled water comes from already treated municipal water systems; paid for at taxpayer expense. Water bottlers then sell this water back to the public at thousands of times the price, virtually unchanged.
– In Tap Water Challenges across the country, people can’t tell a difference
Read More: Problems with bottled water