Turn on the tap (UPDATED)
Imagine a resident of San Franciscan, armed with an empty Evian bottle.
Did you (and do they!) know this bottle could be refilled for more than 10 years with tap water, sourced from a natural spring under the Yosemite National Park, for the cost of a second bottle of Evian (from here via here).
Now we may not all have something as pure as Yosemite spring water gushing out of our tap. But most of us in the West will have perfectly good quality drinking water. Probably as good quality as the bottles we buy, despite the scare stories to the contrary.
So when, on top of the financial benefits, you add the environmental downsides of bottled water we are just starting to become aware of - how the water is extracted, how it is bottled…maybe with some added bubbles, how those bottles are made (and later disposed of...or not), and how they are transported, half way round the world sometimes - it starts to seem like a lot of sense just to turn on the tap instead.
And maybe invest some of the significant sums of money you save back into water development projects, given that 1 in 6 of the worlds population still don't enjoy the same privilege of clean drinking water we do.
(for a fuller water-based rant, have a look on my other blog)
