Bottled water: Photo by DannymanI saw this photo on dannyman's website.. He was illustrating that he refills his collection of bottles with tap water and that he thought bottling water in New Zealand and transporting it to North America was immoral. This quote also made me think.
I read that San Francisco recently enacted a ban on spending any further money for bottled water by city departments–currently the city spends $500,000/year on bottled water.
If you drink 8 glasses of water per day your cost per year is 49 cents (in New York). Buying that water in bottles could cost you $1400. Americans spent more than $10 billion on bottled water last year. The cost to the environment needs to be addressed, too. Transporting a gallon of water from France to Chicago burns about a cup of petroleum. Four out of five of the 30 billion throwaway bottles of water per year end up in landfills.
I noticed that my wife recently switched to drinking tap water cooled in our refrigerator. She still kept buying cans of carbonated water for me, though. Last month I made the switch, too. What about you?
Read more:
New York Times
ABC News
I may give up water altogether.
You wouldn't be able to survive. lol
I just read that America, every day, throws 16 MILLION plastic water bottles into landfill. 16 million???!?!?!!!! What are we thinking??! Just where do we imagine it goes? Can we not think of others and our kids' future at all? Out of sight - out of mind is not a great way to think about everything.
Could we not make them returnable, like glass beer bottles are in Canada? You get $$ back for every one you return and it gets recycled.
pcll
Glass bottles are heavy, and so cost more to transport.
If you drink bottled water, make sure you recycle. (Here in Saint Paul, it's easy--you don't even have to sort. Just make sure you remove the cap before you toss the bottle in the bin.)
And stomp them flat. Like the recycle guys say, we do not like recycling all that air in the cans and bottles. Think of all the trips they could save if every one compacted their recyclables.
HA! Thank you for spreading the word. Danny told you so, indeed! Awesome!!
Cheers,
-dannyman
You are welcome. I appreciate being able to use your photo without the hassle of getting permission. Your new "Danny squared" photo is super and I also like your blog's landing page.
At our house, we have a water cooler with a 5 gallon refillable bottle. Actually, we have two of those bottles: one currently being used, and one to refill when the other one starts to run out.
We tried keeping tap water in a pitcher in the fridge, but we drink a LOT of water, and we were always running out.
Now, we take one of our bottles to the grocery store every Saturday morning and fill it up. And we always have cold water. We even have enough to fill Nalgene bottles, which are what we try to carry around with us instead of buying water.
Tap water is totally safe, and we make a point of giving it to our kids for the fluoride, but I think that St. Paul tap water tastes kind of "green" sometimes. Someone told me it's a byproduct of a kind of algae that grows somewhere in the system? Anyway, since I can't get rid of that taste, and I can't get our tap water cold enough, the water cooler is the best solution for us.
There is only a given amount of water on the Earth all togeather. Bottling this water takes away from the natural water cycle, not to mention the uses for entertainment(aquariums, swimming,etc....) Interfering with this natural cycle by pumping thousands of gallons of our freshwater from our aquifers and springs will effect more than just our economy.
Less evaporation will equal less rain, which will lead to lower water table. Maybe we need to reconsider the way we treat our most valuble resource.
That's a waste of money for spending that kind of money just to get save water.
I think that the government should do some thing about our safty, because is about every body health.
Post new comment