Filtered vs Bottled Water

Remember when it was cool and trendy to drink bottled water back in the early 90s? That was almost 20 years ago and what was considered chic then has become almost a necessity today as millions of Americans purchase and drink bottled water on a daily basis. In the past decade, bottled water consumption has grown consistently in the double digits and the US market alone accounted for 20% of the growth in global PET demand. However in the past 2 years, demand has started to decline thanks to better education and awareness of the many problems created by the bottled water product life cycle. What is the big deal you say? Well only the future of your health and our planet is at stake.

Bottled Water Top Concerns

Concern #5 - The costs of bottled water are too high.

Bottled water prices can range anywhere from $.80/gallon to over $1 a liter depending on the purchase location. If you filtered your tap water, you are looking at around $.02/gallon. This is a savings of $0.78/gallon. If you and your family use 4 gallons per day on average, you would be able to save over $1138 per year in water costs!

While bottled water prices may seem very expensive, the real costs of drinking bottled water extends far beyond our pocketbooks. The product life-cycle of bottled water is very demanding on our natural resources and damaging to our eco-systems due to its HUGE carbon footprints. (See Concerns #4 & #1 below) The costs that our planet and children will pay for our continued production of plastic bottles may one day be astronomical.

Drinking bottled water comes with very high costs and long term consequences.

Concern #4 - Bottled water increases the global price of gasoline.

Bottled water is packaged in Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles which are manufactured in the hundreds of billions. One of the primary ingredients used to create PET is petroleum. After the water is bottled it must be sorted into packs which means more plastics and paper is used. Then the product must be trucked or shipped (imported water) long distances from far away exotic locations to get to our local stores where the end-user must then transport it back to their homes. Every step in the bottled water life-cycle uses oil, including even after death. The plastics recycling process itself requires large amounts of water and energy to operate, just to then re-introduce the bottle back into the wasteful cycle of the bottling industry.

Concern #3 - Chemicals might leach from plastic bottles into the water.

Plastic chemicals can leach from plastic bottles into the product water. This leaching process has been observed in all types of plastics used in the bottled water industry including polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, and polycarbonates. Some of these plastic polymers contain phthalates and bispenol-A (BPA) which are chemicals that are considered hazardous to human health and may even be a carcinogen. These chemicals may be leached from plastic due to exposure to UV sunlight, or simply from extended storage and shelf-life.

BPA is one of the several chemicals known to leach from plastic bottles.

Concern #2 - Bottled water may not be clean and healthy.

The quality of bottled drinking water can vary greatly from one brand to another. The FDA is responsible for bottled water safety at the national level, however their rules completely exempt waters that are packaged and sold within the same state, which account for between 60-70% of all bottled water sold in the United States. Even when bottled waters are covered by the FDA's rules, they are subject to less rigorous testing and purity standards than those which apply to city tap water. In 1999, the NRDC tested more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of bottled water. While most of the tested waters were found to be of high quality, some brands were contaminated: about 1/3 of the waters tested contained levels of contamination -- including synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic -- in at least one sample that exceeded allowable limits under either state or bottled water industry standards or guidelines.

Concern #1 - Plastic bottles will one day inherit the earth.

According to Clean Air Council, it is estimated that Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour or 60 million bottles a day. Given that only 30% of plastics ever gets recycled, that means that 42 million bottles will be discarded daily and left to mother nature to decompose. While the majority will make it to toxic landfills, a good portion will find their way to our local water ways and eventually drift out to sea. The accumulation of plastics, junk, flostam and jetsam has been swirling in a particular part of the Pacific ocean for over 50 years. Known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, this toxic brew was created over time as a result of marine pollution gathered by the action of oceanic currents.

Estimated at around the size of the continental United States, much of the debris in this garbage patch is made up of partially decomposed plastic particles. Often resembling zooplankton, these pellets can absorb pollutants from seawater including PCBs, DDT and PAHs. When ingested by marine animals, it can cause hormone disruption, illness and death. These toxins can also be passed up the food chain to other marine animals and people. Given that it may take up to 500 years for plastics to completely decompose, the plastic bottle that you threw away today may very well outlive even your great-great grandchildren! Even now, the legacy of plastic pollution is already a long and disturbing one with no end in sight. As citizens of this planet, it is our duty to future generations to break our own addictions to plastic bottles before we reach the point of no return.