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“We stopped buying bottled water at home and installed a home water filter.We saved money and couldn’t believe how much less garbage we generated.” Carl Teichman, Normal Ill.

It took a long time for me to overcome my fear of drinking a glass of water directly from my American tap after living several years in the squalor of an Asian village. I had good reason to fear “drinking” water (often direct from the river) in these unsanitary conditions. It was full of microbes that made me sick.Now, years later, I’ve finally “taken back the tap” habit and feel grateful my morning glass of hometown water doesn’t infect me with microbes that may have me doing toilet time in the afternoon. Interestingly, though, during the 1990s Americans turned off the tap to sip bottled water trucked in from any-where-else-buthome.

While we’d silenced most microbes in our tap, public awareness of new health concerns from water pollution mounted, like chlorine by-products, pesticides, nitrates,metals.Today 74 percent of Americans drink bottled water and 1 in 5 drink only bottled water.No question, fresh, pure water is vital for health. But is bottled water the answer? A growing movement to “think outside the bottle” suggests the bottled water habit is costing us more than we thought.Here’s why.

Bottled water harms the environment
The 37 billion plastic water bottles we dispose of yearly have littered our land and seascape. I was stunned to hear from a leading ocean scientistWallace J Nichols that the diet of sea life in some parts of the Pacific Ocean consists of 1 part krill to 6 parts plastic.An autopsy revealed that the first (and fatal) meal of a baby turtle was plastic.Unfortunately with so many “to-go” bottles, a shocking 86 percent of plastic water bottles end up in garbage rather than being recycled,much less than a decade ago; the national recycling rate for PET #1 plastic fell from 40 percent in 1995 to only 23 percent in 2005.Additionally, plastic bottles are made of oil and 47 million gallons are needed yearly to satisfy our thirst for bottled water.We could say we’re drinking oil. Eliminating those oily bottles would be like taking 100,000 cars off roads and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of our air.

Bottled water is often not safer
Many Americans think bottled water is safer than tap. In reality, regulation of bottled water is far weaker.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) monitors tap water under the Safe Water Drinking Act; regular testing is required by law. But bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a “food” with much weaker enforcement. Sadly, FDA is seriously under-funded with less than one full time staff overseeing bottled water safety.Also, safety rules don’t apply for the 60-70 percent of bottles sold across state lines; these require minimal testing for microbes and toxins and,when a problem is found, enforcement of corrective action is often weak.The Natural Resources Defense Council tested 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of bottled water for microbes and toxic pollutants (including carcinogens and hormone disruptors like phthalates.)They found one quarter violated standards.Disturbingly, one company was bottling water from a Massachusetts commercial spring near a hazardous waste site which contained “likely” carcinogens (the water now is used for swimming pools).

Bottled water is expensive
Americans spent $8.8 billion for (non-sparkling) bottled water in 2005, up from $850 million in 2004. Labels
giving impressions of cascading mountain springs are often misleading. Up to 40 percent of bottled water is actually tap water that is sold back to consumers at hundreds of times the cost. Municipalities spend billions of dollars to bringing clean, cheap water to people’s homes, but many of us would rather buy it from a store.Tap water costs less than a quarter of a penny per gallon compared with $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon for bottled water.

WhatYou Can Do toThink Outside the Bottle
Many people are breaking the bottled water habit. Even upscale eateries are taking back the tap.“It just makes sense to us to not have to use all the energy and resources to bottle water in Italy and then truck it to our restaurant and then after that deal with the recycling of it,” said Mike Kossa-Rienzi, general manager of Chez Panisse, Berkeley, Calif.What can you do to catch the wave?

• Whenever possible, choose tap water over bottled water. See www.foodandwaterwatch.org or www.thinkoutsidebottle.org.

• Purchase a good reusable water bottle to tote with you (preferably stainless steel, like Klean Kanteen www.kleankanteen.com).

• At home, replace bottled water with a tap water filter. First find out what contaminants are in your water by requesting a “Consumer Confidence Report” from your water utility (EPA posts many at www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo/index.html or try quick web search).Next, research the best type of filter to remove your contaminants. For example, activated carbon filters often reduce bad taste, chlorine, pesticides, radon and heavy metals. Look to see if they meet NSF/ANSI standards #42 for taste and odor, and #53 for certain chemical contaminants. Reverse osmosis may reduce nitrates, arsenic, fluoride and heavy metals. Helpful resources are the National Sanitation Foundation International (www.nsf.org),Water Quality Association (www.wqa.org), Underwriters
Laboratories Inc. (www.ul.com).

• Support more funding for your public drinking water. Giving up bottled water is not enough.We must protect our watersheds from pollution.Also,many public water systems were built beforeWorldWar I and funds are sorely needed to repair pipes and plants so water can be safely delivered to us.

BOTTLEDWATER IN NUMBERS
74% — Percent of Americans drinking bottled water.
20% — Percent of Americans that ONLY drink bottled water.
40% — Percent of bottled water that is just purified tap water.
30-40% — Percent of bottled water sold across state lines that is actually regulated by FDA.

PLASTIC BOTTLES IN NUMBERS
37,000,000,000 plastic bottles — number of plastic water bottles Americans purchased in 2005.
86% — Percent of plastic water bottles ending up in the garbage instead of recycling.
6 parts plastic, 1 part krill — diet composition of some sea life in Pacific Ocean.
47,000,000 gallons of oil — amount required to produce plastic water bottles for Americans yearly.

COST OF BOTTLEDWATER
$8,800,000,000 —Amount Americans spent for (nonsparkling) bottled water in 2005.
$0.002 — Cost of 1 gallon of tap water
$0.89-$8.26 — Cost of 1 gallon bottled water

References
• “Consumers Guide toWater Filters: How to Find the RightWater Filter forYour Home,” National Resources Defense Council @ <http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/gfilters.asp> August 15, 2005.
• “Take Back the Tap:Why Choosing TapWater Over BottledWater is Better forYour Health,Your Pocketbook, and the Environment,” Food andWaterWatch,Washington D.C., June 2007.Available at <http:www.foodandwaterwatch.org>.
• “Think Outside the Bottle: Challenge Corporate Control ofWater”@ <http://www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org/> viewed Nov. 1, 2007.
• “Water.” Food andWaterWatch @ http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water> viewed Nov. 1, 2007