Why You Should Never Buy Disposable Water Bottles Again

WHY YOU SHOULD never buy DISPOSABLE WATER BOTTLES AGAIN FACTS & FIGURES The world drinks over That's roughly $100 BILLION 50 BILLION worth of bottled water bottles. each year. That's The U.S. consumes 30 BILLION of those bottles each year. 1,500 bottles of water per second. That's as if every person in America drank an average of 30.8 GALLONS of bottled water. In 2012, U.S. total bottled water sales hit 9.67 BILLION gallons – to the tune of $11.8 BILLION. Even though the U.S. has some of the safest tap water in the world, it has the largest market for bottled water (followed by China and then Mexico). Bottled waster costs 300-2,000x more than tap water. Bottled water costs, on average: $7.50/GALLON $1.22/GALLON if buying individual 500mL bottles if buying gallon jugs Tap water costs, on average, $0.002/GALLON. Drinking per day for a year costs: glasses of water TAP BOTTLED about about $0.50 $1,400 If all of the water you used around the house (for showers, dishwashing, watering plants, etc.) was bottled water, your monthly water bill would cost around $9,000. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS 17 MILLION That's enough to fuel barrels of oil are used in the production of disposable water bottles each year. 1 MILLION cars for an entire year. It takes more than 50 MILLION barrels of oil each year to pump, process, transport, and refrigerate bottled water. That's as if % of every bottle of water was filled with oil. It takes 40,000 18-wheelers to deliver our bottled water each week. It takes three times the amount of water to produce a bottle as it does to fill it. Producing bottled water requires up to 2,000 times the energy cost of producing tap water. More than 80% of water bottles end up in landfills. Some are recycled; the rest end up as litter on roadsides and in waterways. Bottles release toxic chemicals when they finally decompose (this process takes an average of 450 years). Some bottlers extract the water used in bottling from springs and aquifers, which can dry up wells, deplete wetlands, and drain rivers. Plastic bottles and bags make up the majority of the litter on beaches and in oceans. Every square mile of the ocean has more than 46,000 pieces of plastic in it. НЕ And, in fact, up to 40% of bottled water There's no guarantee that bottled water is safer or cleaner than water from comes from municipal water systems. That means it's no better than tạp water! Plus, that water's paid for by tax payers, and then sold back to the public at a steep price inflation. the tap. The FDA only regulates bottled water that gets sold across state lines (about 30-40% of all bottled water). The rest is unregulated. One study found that 22% of the brands tested contained levels of chemical contaminants above state health limits. Plastic bottles (especially those labeled #1) can leach phthalates into the water, which may disrupt hormones in humans who # 1 consume it. Most plastic bottles contain BPA, which has been linked to hormonal imbalances and brain and reproductive dysfunction in adults (*based on animal studies). WHAT YOU CAN DO: 1. 2. Take a stand. Contact your reps in Congress, the FDA, and your state governor and ask them to maintain high standards for tap water. Buy a reusable water bottle (ideally BPA-free) and carry it everywhere you go. Filling up is free! 3. Don't reuse disposable plastic water bottles – they may leach chemicals after repeated use, and can't be cleaned properly. 4. Support initiatives to ban bottled water, and advocate for public water bottle filling stations. 5. If you have to buy bottled, buy it better. Choose water that comes from a protected source (call the company to ask where they source their water and how they protect its quality), and make sure to recycle the bottle when you're done. 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