Bottled Water Sucks

Bottled water is one of the most pointless products we consume. It is often no cleaner or better than tap water. In fact, it not uncommonly comes straight out of the tap, including one company that uses the Houston municipal water system. It is expensive. $1 for a bottle???? That is more expensive than gas. For something you can get out of your tap safely for free. Plus, bottled water is such an invented consumer product. Nobody drank bottled water 25 years ago. Today, everyone does. Has our tap water become less safe? No.

Bottled water also has tremendous environmental costs. While some people recycle those bottles, most just toss them in the trash. Ashley Braun has a great piece at Grist showing the damage these bottles cause.

They take three times as much water as they hold to create. Plastics make up 11% of landfills and no small amount of this are bottles. Much of the bottled water is coming out of the Great Lakes (and what bad has ever been dumped in those?), literally leading to lower water levels. The plastic in the bottles comes from oil.

There simply is no good reason for people with safe water systems to consume bottled water. If you want to make a simple move to help the environment, stop using these bottles. Buy a Nalgene bottle instead. It's still plastic but you can use it endlessly. You'll save tons of water, oil, and space by doing so.