Think Before You Drink (Bottled Water)

Think before you drink (Bottled Water)! 

Bottled water is the second most popular beverage in the USA. By drinking bottled water you are supporting that industry, an industry that horribly pollutes our environment, our health and empties our pockets one ‘small expense’ at a time!

Lets start with something that (unfortunately) almost everyone is passionate about.. Money! Drinking 8 glasses of water per day for a year costs:
Tap water: 50 cents! Bottled water: $1,400
Back in 2012 bottled water sales hit $11.8 billion dollars! 40% of bottled water comes from municipal systems anyway, meaning it’s the same as tap! Plus, that water is paid for by tax payers and sold back to the public at a steep price inflation!

Now lets talk environmental- It takes 50 million barrels of oil to pump, process, transport and refrigerate bottled water and takes 40,000 18 wheelers to transport it each week. Producing bottled water requires up to 2,000 times the energy cost of producing tap water and more than 80% of bottled water ends up in landfills. SOME of them are recycled, the rest end up as litter on roadsides and in waterways. Plastic bags and bottled water make up the majority of litter on beaches and in our oceans. Every square mile of the ocean has 46,000 pieces of plastic in it.

As for our health, there is NO guarantee that bottled water is ANY safer than tap! You heard me right! In fact only about 30% of bottled water is even regulated at all! One study found that 22% of brands tested contained levels of chemical contaminants above health limits. Plastic bottles in general can leach phthalates into water, soda, tea, juice (or whatever liquid is in the bottle) which has been found to disrupt hormones in humans who consume it. Also, most people haven't even thought about the fact that cancer blew up by A TON whenever we introduced plastic into the kitchen. Putting our drinks, food, and other consumables in plastic rather than glass.

Not to mention, for every person supporting the bottled water industry, they are supporting less attention being paid to public water systems.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be able to drink my tap water and not have to worry that the next day it could be under boil order! The only way we can make this happen is if we stop buying bottled water and take a stand. Demand higher standards for tap water.

-Whit