Bottled water can cost 1,000 times more than tap water

Waste: Large amounts of energy are consumed in manufacture,
transportation, and recycling of the bottles.

MOOP: Nine out of ten plastic water bottles end up as garbage or
litter – not recycled! That's 30 million discarded plastic bottles
each day— more than 10 billion a year.

Toxicity + Health: In 2002, 1.5 million tons of plastic was used to
package 6 billion gallons of bottled water. The production of this
plastic leads to the release of a variety of chemicals.

* Smaller bottles are usually made from polyethylene terephthalate
(PET) which generates more than 100 times more toxic emissions than an
equivalent amount of glass.

* Leaching of chemicals into the water is also a concern. "Eight of
the ten 5-gallon polycarbonate jugs we checked left residues of the
endocrine disrupter, bisphenol A, in the water" (Consumer Reports
8/00). Leaching increases with heat, raising concern about storage and
transportation of the bottles. No problems have been associated with
refillable stainless steel containers.

* Bottled water less safe than tap: NRDC tested more than 1,000
bottles of 103 brands of bottled water. They found contamination
exceeding allowable limits in at least one sample from about one-third
of the brands, including synthetic organics, bacteria, and arsenic.
http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bwbwinx.asp
Bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, which
has weaker regulations than the EPA regulations for tap water.
("What's in that Bottle?" Consumer Reports 1/03.) Bottled water sold
within states is regulated only by state agencies.

COST OF BOTTLED WATER
Is clean water a basic human right
or a commodity to be bought + sold?
Having created a growing market for bottled water, multinational
corporations are exercising their power to get access to springs,
aquifers, and municipal water supplies to keep their profits flowing,
with little regard for the environmental impacts of large water
withdrawals. Nestlé has taken over many small, independent companies,
set up much larger operations at local springs, and is aggressively
pursuing new sites around the Unites States. Coke's Dasani and Pepsi's
Aquafina brands depend on cheap municipal
water in the United States. See the Movie Thirst, about Water
Privatization – happening in CA and around the world
http://www.thirstthemovie.org

What you Can Do –
• Avoid using bottled water unless absolutely necessary.
• Use reusable stainless steel containers
• At public events and at home, offer pitchers of water.
• Research the quality of your public drinking water.
- look for your Quality Reports from your water company in July
• For information about your local drinking water, go to
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo.htm
• Join organizations in protecting our rivers, streams,and wetlands
from pollution to assure high quality publicwater supplies.