The Bottled Water Myth

Submitted by: Rebecca Dorville

The average American uses 170 plastic water bottles in one year totaling 50 billion plastic bottles a year. In fact, Americans spend more than $15 billion on bottles water every year and most of these bottles never get recycled. Our responsibility to make a positive difference in our environment is evident as our population and demand on natural resources grow.

Waste management has become a large problem in the world with landfills growing to immense sizes while recycling rates remain low. Add to that the energy that is required to manufacture and transport the sheer number of plastic bottles produced each year to market severely drains limited fossil fuels and presents a significant strain on the environment. The production of plastic bottles produces many byproducts that are extremely harmful to the environment. The most common plastic used in water bottle manufacturing is PET (polyethylene terephthalate), a substance that is environmentally unfriendly. Producing bottled water also requires 17.5 kilograms of water to produce only 1 kilogram of PET thus more water is used making a PET bottle than is actually put into it. The bottled water trade group reported that 11.7 billion water bottles were sold in the U.S. in 2007 and only 10 percent were recycled making 90 percent of bottles ending up in the trash. That is an extra 12.6 billion plastic bottles ending up in the landfills with water that is not healthier than the average tap water.

Bottled water is much less regulated than tapped water. In fact, bottled water companies, because they are not under the same accountability standards as municipal water systems, may provide a significantly lower quality of water than the water from a tap. Bottled water is one of the least regulated industries and is usually held to less-stringent standards than ordinary tap water. Since tap water is a public resource the quality and content must be made public to the consumer. Bottled water has no such regulations and is regulated more like a soft drink than a public resource. The truth is that often bottled water is little more than tap water in a bottle. The Federal regulations that govern the quality of bottled water only apply if it is transported across state lines, and then they only require it to be as good as tap water. Most bottled water is bottled and sold within the same state to avoid Federal purity standards therefore there are no assurances or requirements that bottled water is any safer or better than tap water.

Not only is there a high price to pay on the environment those cost impact the public as well. In the year 2007, Americans alone spent more than $8 billion on bottled water at an average cost of more than $1 a bottle-representing $11 billion in sales. For some people who do not like the taste of tap water the most recent and innovative solution to the problem of bottled water is the purchase of water filters. Water filters currently provide the best and healthiest solution to the problems of both bottles water and tap water. Water filters remove chlorine and bacterial contaminants providing better tasting and smelling drinking water. Purchasing a counter top filter results is a resource of clean, healthy drinking water that costs less than bottled water, protects the body from disease and is good for both the consumer and the environment.

About the Author: Rebecca Dorville

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