Quit Hitting the Bottle

I guess I should practice what I preach, so I'm making a commitment. No more bottled water. I've been leaning in that direction, but today I stumbled upon an article that for some reason I can't find again. (It was a featured story in Yahoo. But I've managed to source most of it.) A few things:

-60 million plastic bottles a day are going into U.S. landfills.
-Plastic bottles can take up to 1000 years to biodegrade.
-In the U.S., we spent $15 Billion on bottled water last year.
-More than 25.5 billion plastic water bottles were sold in the U.S. last year.
-About 1 in 5 plastic water bottles used in America are recycled.
-Producing our plastic bottles uses 1.5 million barrels of crude oil annually. That's enough to fuel over one million cars a year.
-Last year bottling water produced 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
-Three gallons of water are used for each gallon of bottled water produced and sold, while one billion people in the world do not have easy access to potable water.
-Tap water is under even more stringent regulations than bottled water. Many experts believe that overall it is as good or better for you than tap water. (See this Readers Digest article as one among many.)
-Bottled water costs (ranges I've read) between 500 and 2000 times more than municipal water.
-Much of the bottled water purchased is simply tap water. This is true for both PepsiCo's water (Aquafina) and Coke's (Dasanti). There are no labeling requirements.
-And more and more research is demonstrating that in blind taste tests, tap water is preferred to many brands of bottled water.

Bottled water became popular when smart marketers from French companies (first Perrier, then Evian) convinced trend-setters that it was cool. I predict that in five years, drinking bottled water will be considered as uncool and irresponsible as littering or driving cars that burn oil. So drop by REI and get a nifty-looking Nalgene or refillable sports bottle. (Don't refill plastic water bottles for health reasons.) How hard is that? And if you don't like the idea of simple tap water, get a PUR or another filtering system, which are cheap and easy to use.

Yeah, bottled water is convenient. That's the same thing decent people used to say about throwing dirty Pampers out their car window. What would you think of them now? C'mon, be cool, responsible and ahead of your time. Quit hitting the bottle!