la violette pensée

bonedust:mohandasgandhi:

Bottled water is my #1 pet peeve.

It’s really discouraging to see so many people in public with plastic water bottles. People know this stuff is probably the greatest modern era con, right? Bottled water comes in Polyethylene terephthalate bottles, which is rarely recycled and requires a great deal of energy to produce.  Don’t forget that it costs more than gasoline, while you could be getting the same amount of tap water for less than a penny.  The majority of these horrendous costs are attributed to the packaging, not the actual water, of which is no more healthy than tap water in most regions.  In fact, a countless number of studies have found considerable amounts of bacteria to be prevalent in many popular brands of bottled waters.  So, why do we continue to buy this junk?  What’s the point?

Empower yourself.  Bottle your own water.

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What I hate is all the wrong information associated with bottled water.

“It tastes better.”  Actually, it comes from the same source as tap water.

“It’s safer and cleaner.” Actually, companies don’t need to test for e. coli and other potentially life-threatening bacteria, whereas your hydro provider does.

“I recycle my bottles.” Actually, most end up in plastic bottle mountains in developing nations where the chemicals in them leach into the ground and cause damage to local water sources.

“It’s more convenient.” Turning on your tap is less convenient than going to the shop?

If traveling to some parts of the world where clean water is not available, and you do not have the natural defenses to contaminated water, then bottled water would be safer. But in developed countries, where tap water is strictly regulated, it is often safer than bottled water. New York City has the cleanest water in the world, and it is also the highest consumer of bottled water. Save money. Reduce your carbon footprint. And be healthier. Get a reusable water bottle and use your tap.

When travelling to strange regions, it is easy to also bring some type of water treatment system. The bottled water excuse holds no water.

I use an MSR Waterworks filter system and bring as a backup iodine and citric acid. I may also, depending on the nature of my trip, have the means of boiling water.

I will also mention that when it comes to reusable bottles, it is not necessarily a better method, from an environmental standpoint, to use stainless steel & plastic and/or aluminium & plastic bottles, which are now, in the main, produced using very large amounts of energy in Chinese or other Asian factories which are not subject to stringent pollution controls, and then shipped halfway around the world using even more irreplaceable and pollutive fossil fuel energy.

This doesn’t even begin to take into account the global infrastructure necessary to support such a venture, or the imbalanced economic factors involved in much of what we call “global trade”.

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