Alternatives to Bottled Water

Posted on Tue Mar 27 2007

By: Jeremy Taylor in Daily Green Tips

Today's challenge is to cut bottled water out of your routine.

The bottled water explosion in recent decades has brought with it an enormous increase in consumer waste. In the first three years of this decade, the planet's thirsty consumers drank over 500 million litres of bottled water, according to the International Council of Bottled Water Associations. That's a whole lot of plastic bottles. In fact, the World Wildlife Fund says the industry generates 1.5 million tons of plastic a year.

Even the best recycling programs won't be able to make that disappear and those of us who are currently watching a winter's worth of snow melt are surrounded by appalling reminders that most of those bottles don't even make it to a garbage can.

If you're concerned about the quality of the water in your taps and, granted, it's a fair concern consider instead the many alternatives. You can have clean water without the disposable plastic. A filter system for your tap, or a filter jug in your fridge, is cheaper than buying bottled water and much, much greener.

And maybe even safer. Some quick facts about bottled water:

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization released a study in 1997 concluding that bottled water is not better for you than tap water.

Many bottled water companies are simply selling you reprocessed municipal water: Aquafina (Pepsi) and Dasani (Coca-Cola), for example.

Roughly 22 percent of bottled water brands have been found to contain, in at least one sample, chemical contaminants at levels above governmental health regulations.

Correlations have even been drawn between increased cavity decay and consumption of bottled water, due, some say, to the natural absence of fluoride in bottled spring water.

If you do find yourself buying a bottle of water, buy a local brand this means less transport, and also that the water is being consumed closer to its source.