by Catherine Haug
The people from the The Story of Stuff have a newish 8 minute video on The Story of Bottled Water. Click on the ‘more’ link below to see the video.
See also Mercola’s article on The Quickest, Easiest Way to Detox Your Body, which is about obtaining clean, pure water. While it includes a sales pitch for his water filters, it contains good information about water contaminants and how to avoid them, including:
- What’s contaminating your well water;
- The problem with urban water treatments;
- Is sewage spilling into your drinking water?
- The hazards of chlorinated water: disinfection byproducts (DBPs);
- Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in your water;
- Radon in your water.
The video:
NOTE: if the video does not display here, click on The Story of Bottled Water to view.
A few facts from the video:
- Bottled water costs 2,000 times that of tap water (and yet is no better, and may be worse than your own tap water);
- The manufacture of plastic water bottles each year takes as much energy as would fuel 1 million cars;
- Recycled plastic bottles are primarily sent to India where they are downcycled to lower quality products that would eventually be thrown away, rather than remade into more bottles or other quality products.
Reasonable alternatives to plastic water bottles:
- If you are fortunate to have a deep well that provides pure water, drink it straight from the tap, without filtering.
- Otherwise, install an inexpensive filter system or use a Brita-type filter container.
- Carry clean or filtered water from your own tap in safe stainless steel sports bottles;
- Water bottled in recyclable glass.
Check out their storyofstuff.org website for links to more informative videos across the spectrum of sustainability as a topic.