Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Is bottled water any safer than tap water?

Do you drink bottled or tap, or both? Do you have a Brita or another filtered system?

We use to have PUR filter on our water tap and did so for many years, but since moving west we never bothered installing it again. We found the filters not only expensive, but it made me crazy to have these huge pieces of plastic that we're expected to turf once they're used up.

Bottled water is tap water so why not drink straight from the tap and that's what we've been doing ever since we decided not to put another filter on our tap. I admit that I do occasionally buy bottled water when I've forgotten or have been too lazy to carry my own, but I'm now making more of an effort to stop buying water bottles that contribute to landfill and carry my own water on a regular basis. After all I never go out the door for a run without carrying my water so why shouldn't I do this every time I go out the door?

Some things to think about:
- most water bottles end up in landfill
- bottled water is tap water.
- bottling water for sale (for profit) creates us to think of water as a privilege and not a basic human need for survival.
- the environmental impact of producing the plastics to contain the water and then ship the water to be sold. Think about who does this really benefit?

You can read more here and you can check out Co-op America's site via my sidebar and search the water debate there.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Recently I've been thinking about all the plastic in my house. I've bought numerous plastic containers for storing food in the fridge...now I'm rethinking that method and plan on using glass as much as possible...back to the way my mother stored food. It's not a perfect solution, but it has to help somewhat. md

sp said...

Great idea md. I believe that any little changes we make daily has a greater impact. We switched to glass containers for our work lunches and I think they're great.

redjane Stephanie Belding said...

A friend was telling me he has friends who have no plastic whatsoever in their house, not on appliances or furniture, in the kitchen or storage- they've eliminated it completely. I can't imagine how they've done it but there you have it. It really made me acknowledge how much I live with plastics daily.

Wandering Coyote said...

According to George of The Hour, the plastic used for bottled water is bad for you.

I think it was David Suzuki who said that the solution to the water problem in the world is not bottled water. I have no idea why people don't get it. Rossland has great water and I don't need a Brita or anything here. Besides, bottled water is expensive! What's the point?