I carry a bottle of water around with me, but it’s the same leach-free bottle that I’ve had for months. I wash it out and fill it with tap water instead of buying bottled water while I’m out in the city. Not only does it save money, it also limits the amount of plastic entering the consumer stream.
New American Dream lists five reasons to break the bottle water habit. Reason number 4?
Bottled water is full of oil. Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 cars for a year. (NY Times) To put it another way, the entire energy costs of the lifecycle of a bottle of water is equivalent, on average, to filling up a quarter of each bottle with oil. (Pacific Institute)
For more information about how you can break the bottle water habit, check out the New American Dream website.
I have been struggling to insist on tap water all this week in Stuttgart, which is difficult due to my limited German. Mostly they think I want it without gas (which, funnily enough, is silly as the only reason I’d ever buy bottled water is to get sparkling).
I just don’t understand why people would waste money on bottled water either. We are all so stupid!
I’ll grant that there are places where the water is genuinely unsafe, but Germany? Not so much.
We keep our bottles (not usually from water, usually from tea and Gatorade) wash them out and refill them with tap water. We keep several bottles in the fridge, especially during the summer. It’s the job to refill the bottle and I’ve noticed we all drink a lot more water that way. If the bottles get left at the park or accidentally stepped on it’s not a huge loss either.
It always puzzles me when some people wouldn’t drink water out of their faucets, but are fine with doing it in restaurants. Okay, sometimes these people tell me that restaurants filter the water first… Well, I asked a friend who worked at a restaurant whether restaurants filter their water and she said no. And also I’ve seen a restaurant worker just fill up the pitcher under the faucet when I handed it to her to fill up.