Our water increasingly contains some scary contaminants. Most people who are aware of this opt for bottled water. But commondreams.org has a piece with some fascinating statistics about the price about water, that is, the price to the community
Bottled water can cost 240 to 10,000 times more than tap water. For the price of one bottle of Evian, for example, a San Franciscan can receive 1,000 gallons of tap water.
The bigger problem is what it costs the environment. Transporting bottled water involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. Just supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, enough to take 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, the Common Dreams article says.
It goes on to say, "more than 1 billion plastic water bottles end up in the California's trash each year, taking up valuable landfill space, leaking toxic additives, such as phthalates, into the groundwater and taking 1,000 years to biodegrade."
(if you want to read the whole article, go to:
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0218-05.htm )
Okay, if bottled water is such a bad deal for you and for the environment, what can you do?
I answered that for myself a couple of years ago by buying a small water distiller. It's about the size of the coffee maker, is easier to use, and gives us absolutely pure water.
It's rather noisy when it's running, which annoys Alma. But I usually run it in the morning before she wakes up.
Posted by Deck at February 18, 2007 07:02 PM