A facinating article on what bottled water "really" costs :
Message in a BottleThe largest bottled-water factory in North
America is located on the outskirts of Hollis, Maine. In the back of
the plant stretches the staging area for finished product: 24 million
bottles of Poland Spring water. As far as the eye can see, there are
double-stacked pallets packed with half-pint bottles, half-liters,
liters, "Aquapods" for school lunches, and 2.5-gallon jugs for the
refrigerator.
Really, it is a lake of Poland Spring water, conveniently celled off
in plastic, extending across 6 acres, 8 feet high. A week ago, the lake
was still underground; within five days, it will all be gone, to
supermarkets and convenience stores across the Northeast, replaced by
another lake's worth of bottles.
Looking at the piles of water, you can have only one thought: Americans sure are thirsty.
. . . .
Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles a day, while more than
half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water.
. . . .
If the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.
. . . .
24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi.
. . . .
The bubbles in San Pellegrino are extracted from volcanic springs in
Tuscany, then trucked north and injected into the water from the source.
. . . .
We pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year--in excess of $1 billion worth of plastic.
. . . .
Worldwide, 1 billion people have no reliable source of drinking water;
3,000 children a day die from diseases caught from tainted water.
. . . . .
Once you understand the resources mustered to deliver the bottle of
water, it's reasonable to ask as you reach for the next bottle, not
just "Does the value to me equal the 99 cents I'm about to spend?" but
"Does the value equal the impact I'm about to leave behind?"
Simply asking the question takes the carelessness out of the
transaction. And once you understand where the water comes from, and
how it got here, it's hard to look at that bottle in the same way again.
I reach for filtered tap water and then unfiltered tap water before I reach for a bottle these days. I feel better about it.
JoeUser Forums
WinCustomize Forums
What's up with that? 
