bottle vs. tap

The bottled water industry is booming these days, raising by almost 10% just last year. It provides an easy and efficient way for people to make water portable and is accessible almost anywhere you go. The industry also claims that bottled water has the added benefit of being "healthier" for you than regular water. Many people find this information misleading and choose to boycott bottled water altogether. Alternatives such as canteens (which are now highly marketed) are being used as substitues for the bottles themselves, with the use of tap water. To many bottled water is a huge waste of natural resources and gives misleading facts about the "health benefits" that bottled water provides. Just last year Americans consumed 8.3 billion gallons of bottled water, about 26 gallons per person. 86% of those bottles become garabage or litter, ending up in landfills where they are either burned, emitting toxic fumes into the environment, or buried, where they take up 1,000 years to biodegrade. To produce enough bottles to acquire to America's demand, 1.5 million barrels oil are used annually. Aside from being extremely unsustainable, bottled water has shown to have no different health affects as tap water according to a study by the Natural Resources Defense council. Some bottled water is spring water, but most is tap water with added minerals (that have to been to proven to have no health benefits). The report actually showed that there are more regulations governing the quality of tap water than there are governing the quality of bottled water. Recycling bottled water is said to help ease the environmental burden that bottled water poses in the first place, by conserving energy and renewing resources. Unfortunately, studies have shown that not enough of the bottles (a mere 23%) are actually recycled. The energy saved in recycling these bottles doesn't even add up to the energy that needs to be used to renew them. In parts of the world where natural water is scarce, bottled water is a potentially ingenious idea, providing people with clean, drinkable, portable water. When that water is being mass distributed to people who have access to clean drinking water everywhere they go, it is safe to say that we are being very wasteful and unsustainable.






http://www.pmmag.com/Articles/Feature_Article/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000120137
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/bottled-water4.htm
http://agreenliving.net/bottled-water-controversy/
http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2007/update68?gclid=CNyQhYfl36wCFcbd4AodPFhvpA