Monday, April 16, 2007

What's in your Water?

A while back, I posted a blog about Fiji water. Well, as it turns out, it is not only not worth the cost to the environment to drink Fiji water, but it isn't worth it to drink ANY bottled water. With the costs for bottling and transporting, and especially the cost of the plastic bottle, we should really all go back to tap water. If the thought grosses you out, check out the National Assessment of Tapwater Quality Database to see how clean (or dirty) your water is and keep in mind that most modern communities have cleaner tap water than typical bottled water.

Those of you in Chicago and New York? Use a filter. Mom? Your water is good! Drink from the tap! My water is contaminated mostly with arsenic. Lovely.

4 comments:

Eliza said...

Viva la Nalgene!

Megora said...

I was just reading the green issue of Vanity Fair in which there is a great (and tragic) article about how water systems all over the world are being privatized. It's less common in the States (though, cities like Atlanta have a privatized system). There are some scary stats out there about how population growth and climate change will lead to millions of people without drinkable water soon. So learning to conserve water use, in addition to limiting bottled water purchases, is more important than ever.

Anonymous said...

We are looking into getting water in GLASS that is recyled by the company into new bottles once they reach the end of their lives so to speak.
I know that water in plastic is bad, but even the water from a filter through another filter seems to bother me. WHAT should I do???? ARGHHHHHHHH
I (Dawn) ALSO can't sign into my account here because its saying the password is WRONG and of course I have forgotten it. ARHGHHHH. So that is why its listed as anonymous! Darn it!

Bone-a-fide said...

Good blog, Aubrey. I'm pretty much a water snob so I don't drink tap, for the most part, but also felt so much guilt about buying bottled water that I invested in glass bottles and a padded water bottle holder. The bottles were about $8 for six--it's helped me stay away from plastic.

Also, Jim Gaffigan has a hilarious bit about bottled water being a French conspiracy to prove that Americans are so stupid we'd even buy water (which is free) if the French said it was in style. Funny.