Reduce Your Carbon Footprint:Say NO to Bottled Water

Think before you buy that drink: Production of bottled water in 2006 alone released 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. Of the 30 billion bottles that end up as litter each year, those that go unrecycled can take 1,000 years to decompose

The Sierra Club believes that all people should have access to affordable,clean drinking water. This means protecting water sources and securing adequate funding to upgrade municipal systems should be national priorities.Visit www.sierraclub.org/cac/water.
The bottled water industry, led by Nestlé, Coca Cola, and PepsiCola aggressively promotes bottled water through sexy marketing campaigns.They rival the Joe Camel ads that hooked kids on cigarettes and the Happy Cows ads that belie the dairy industry’s animal factories that dominate subsidized agriculture in California. This trendy “healthy”drink can cost 500 to 4,000 times more than tap water.In the U.S., more than 30 billion plastic water bottles end up as garbage or litter each year. 85 percent don’t get recycled and end up in landfills, or as litter—66 million every day. They can take 1,000 years to decompose and contribute to the vortex of plastic waste in the Pacific Garbage Patch, which maybe twice the size of Texas. Visit www.algalita.org.
Smaller bottles are made frompolyethylene terephthalate (PET),which generates 100 times more toxic emissions than glass. Researchers found that 8 of 10 PET bottles leave residues of the endocrine disrupter bisphenol A in the water. Exposure to extremely low doses of bisphenol A is strongly linked to breast cancer, prostate cancer,and diabetes. If you are concerned about the quality or taste of your tap water, it is much cheaper to install a water filter on your tap to remove the pollutants than to depend on bottled water.No problems have been associated with refillable stainless stee lor aluminum/baked enamel lined containers.

Reducing Our Carbon Footprint:
The Pacific Institute in Oakland estimates that production of bottled water for U.S. consumption in 2006 required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the energy used for transportation. This released over 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide,a major global warming gas.The total amount of energy embedded in the use of bottled water is the equivalent of filling a plastic bottle one quarter full of oil, according to the Pacific Institute.

Vicki Lee is a Bay Chapter member who works on water quality and privatization issues in northern California.