Break the Bottled Water Habit

Top Five Reasons to Give Up Bottled Water

5. Disposable plastic water bottles are not meant for multiple uses.The #1 polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is fine for a single use, but reuse can lead to bacterial growth and leaching of dangerous chemicals.
4. Bottled water is full of oil. Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 17 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 cars for a year. 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)
3. Bottled water is expensive!  Drinking the recommended daily amount of water using bottled water can cost an average of $1,400 per year; drinking the same amount from the tap costs around 49 cents for the year. (NY Times)
2. Your tap water is fine to drink.  Tap water is more highly regulated than bottled water and over 90 percent of water systems meet EPA's standards for tap water quality.  (If the taste or color is a little off from your tap, your pipes are probably at fault—a simple filtration system should do the trick to take both aesthetic problems away.)
1. At least 40 percent of bottled water is tap water anyway.  That’s right: you are paying a huge premium on water that you could have just gotten from your tap in the first place. (Natural Resources Defense Council)  You probably like tap water more than bottled water, too!  Want to test that out?  Try the Tap Water Challenge!