Especially for the Florida Springs
By John Potter
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Is bottled water a bad thing? It’s probably a question few ask, but probably should.
First…ask yourself why you buy bottled water. It may be because you think it’s more pure or clean that your city water or it may be convenience.
Here are some facts:
The National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) recently completed a four year study on the quality of bottled water. It included over 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of bottled water and the results were favorable. Most bottled water was fine to drink and anything dangerous to drink was rare, but is tap water less pure?
Nationally the Food and Drug Administration is responsible for the safety of bottled water, BUT…FDA rules do not apply to water bottled and sold within the same state and that accounts for between 60% and 70% of bottled water sold in the United States. Bottled water standards set by the FDA allow less rigorous testing and purity standards than those which apply to city tap water. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, St. Louis and some other cities have banned the use of city funds to purchase bottled water showing their faith in their city water systems.
I don’t want to overstate anything, but tap water and bottled water are similar in purity in most cases. There is also the fact that tap water contains fluoride and bottled water doesn’t, but I’m not getting off onto that topic.
A 2001 report of the World Wide Fund for Nature found that roughly 1.5 million tons of plastic are expended in the bottling of 89 billion liters of water each year. That’s a lot of plastic, and that’s not mentioning the fossil fuels and other resources necessary to facilitate the manufacturing process. Some of these bottles doubtless are recycled, but they cannot be washed and reused because the plastic leaches chemicals into the water as it ages.
By the way…based on numbers I found around the web and with some quick calculating I estimate that somewhere around 695 water bottles are thrown out every second in the US alone.
Where does the water come from?
Somewhere around 25% of bottled water is tap water either retreated or not. Being a lover of Florida’s springs that’s okay with me, but there are legitimate “spring water” bottlers out there that do bottle at our springs. There has been a lot of opposition to these bottlers for a variety of reasons. The most prevalent one, in my opinion, is that well managed, reasonable arrangements will eventually go out of control and springs will be sucked dry, environments destroyed and tourism driven away.
I don’t know if I agree with that, but I think that bottling at a spring is a pointless endeavor anyhow. If your tap water is so bad that you won’t drink it, then you should be complaining to your local government, not taking resources from another community. It is possible that springs can be damaged and they are a precious resource. Why risk it. If you want to drink from a spring come to north Florida and drink from one.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that although there is nothing wrong with the water in most bottled water the process from which it is acquired can be harmful, the process by which it’s bottled is wasteful, and the refuse of plastic bottles is extremely wasteful.
I don’t think bottled water should be banned. Maybe you’ll need water somewhere and the convenience store doesn’t want to let you drink from the hose….whatever. Bottled water just shouldn’t be a regularly consumed item in your daily routine, and I would much rather see the change come from the public’s free will than some regulatory agency. Besides, bottled water is a waste of money. You’re already paying for tap water.
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Clip from Penn & Teller on Bottled Water as posted on Youtube (not an Escape Key Graphics product) |
Related Story from the Florida Times-Union
Good video on bottled water in Florida
Learn more about the Florida Springs at floridasprings.info
