Drink Tap Water: 25 – 30% of Bottled Water Sold in US Comes from City’s or Town’s Tap Water, Yet Not Subject to Same Water Quality Standards!!! (BostonSustainableFoodExaminer)

Feb.21, 2009 in Water Industry

(Feb. 20, 2009, Boston Sustainable Food Examiner)

Did you know that bottled water in the U.S. is not subject to the same stringent standards as tap water? The Environmental Protection Agency sets standards for water that comes out of your sink, but bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, which uses a different – and far less strict — set of criteria to determine what can be in your drink.

Whether or not you’re concerned about the quality of the water you drink, you can be sure that bottled water comes at a high environmental cost. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, Americans consumed 31.2 billion liters of bottled water in 2006. New American Dream estimates that 900,000 tons of plastic were used to make those bottles, and that the manufacturing process emitted more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Add the greenhouse gasses emitted by trucking those bottles around the country, the waste generated by unrecycled bottles (86% of them, says New American Dream!), and the amount of water it takes to bottle water (3.5 liters used for every liter bottled, according to the Pacific Institute), and you’ve got one very earth-unfriendly industry.

If you still love your bottled water, consider this: According to the National Resource Defence Council, “25 to 30 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States comes from a city’s or town’s tap water.” That includes Pepsi’s Aquafina water and CocaCola’s Dasani water. What’re you spending all that money for, then?

The best thing you can do for the environment – and your wallet – is to drink tap water from re-usable containers. To learn more about the drinkability of water in your town, check out the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s annual and monthly water quality reports.

(Original Article Here)