The Facts About Bottled Water

Americans waste about 60 million water bottles a day that have no where to go but a landfill for all eternity. That is both a lot of money and a lot of damage to the environment.

The simple fact is that unless we want our grandchildren swimming in a sea of useless plastic bottles, we need to change the way we look at H20. Below you will find some facts on how bottle water affects the environment and the economy in addition to some solutions.

Plastic Water Bottle Fact #1: Bottled water is costing Americans a lot of money.

While other countries desperate seek drinking water, the United States has plenty of it. Still Americans spend billions of dollars on bottled water.

The price of bottled water is hundreds of times more expensive than good old fashioned tap water. Tap water only costs about $0.0015 a gallon while the same amount in bottles can easily cost $10 dollars.

Americans annually consume about 8.6 billion bottles of water while 53 billion bottles are consumed globally. This equates to about $61 billion dollars in bottled water.

Plastic Water Bottle Fact #2: Bottled water is rarely better than tap water.

People usually buy bottled water assuming that it comes from wonderful spring or underwent an extensive filtering process. The truth of the matter is that 40% of all bottled water is taken from municipal resources anyway. Additionally, 22% of bottled water contained contaminants at levels above state health limits.

Plastic Water Bottle Fact #3: Bottled water is wasteful.

In order to make water bottles at the rate which Americans use them, 17 billion barrels of oil need to be used annually in order to make the plastic. This amount of oil could fuel 1 million cars for a year.

It also takes about 3 times the amount of water to produce the bottle than to actually fill it.

Lastly, only 1 in 4 water bottles are actually recycled. The rest contribute to the 3 billion pounds of waste from plastic water bottles.

Solutions

The good news is that there are solutions to these kinds of problems. If you are still concerned about the quality of your tap water invest in a filter. This will provide you and your family great water at a much lower price than buying bottles. Additionally, many stores have begun selling reusable water bottles made out of anything from aluminum to glass. They come in all shapes, sizes, and colors for easy and stylish water on the go. For some sleek, stylish, and sustainable reusable bottles check out Yahoo Shine's "5 eco-friendly water bottles to reuse, rehydrate, refill."
Sources:
Online Education - Bottled Water Facts
Bottled Water Blues