There is no doubt about how convenient bottled water can be. The millions in sales each year is testament to the fact that the general public likes it and keeps buying it despite the fact that they can acquire the product virtually for free from their home faucets. There is however a price to pay for that convenience and the price in the view of some for society is too high. First of all there is the cost. A small bottle of water such as Aquafina or Dasani can cost in excess of $3 in New York City and contain the same amount of water in a typical glass which you could get out of your tap for literally pennies. The source of the water is often the same. The people that market and make bottled water are the same companies that make soda such as Coke And Pepsi and they go the great strides to portray the image of bottled water as pure as if it comes from a mountain stream. About 35% of the bottled water found in the U.S.A. comes from a municipal water supply which is the same place your tap water comes from. They just run it through a water purifier to enhance it a little more and make it fresher tasting. One of the strategies that the bottled water companies initially undertook to promote interest in their product was to scare the public into believing that their tap water was somehow polluted and unsafe to drink and that their pure product would be better for you and safer which is actually not the case considering that the water very often comes from the same place. Then there is the problem of the garbage that it is generating. All of those plastic bottles that people dispose of after they consume their bottled water ends up eventually in city landfills because while much of it is recycled these days not all of it is and the stuff ends up taking centuries to break down and when it does can sometimes, depending on the type of plastic the bottles are made of, emit dangerous chemicals over time such as Bisphenol (BPA) which has been linked in studies to an increased risk for the development of Breast cancer and Prostate cancer for those who are excessively exposed to the chemical.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
The Trouble With Bottled Water
There is no doubt about how convenient bottled water can be. The millions in sales each year is testament to the fact that the general public likes it and keeps buying it despite the fact that they can acquire the product virtually for free from their home faucets. There is however a price to pay for that convenience and the price in the view of some for society is too high. First of all there is the cost. A small bottle of water such as Aquafina or Dasani can cost in excess of $3 in New York City and contain the same amount of water in a typical glass which you could get out of your tap for literally pennies. The source of the water is often the same. The people that market and make bottled water are the same companies that make soda such as Coke And Pepsi and they go the great strides to portray the image of bottled water as pure as if it comes from a mountain stream. About 35% of the bottled water found in the U.S.A. comes from a municipal water supply which is the same place your tap water comes from. They just run it through a water purifier to enhance it a little more and make it fresher tasting. One of the strategies that the bottled water companies initially undertook to promote interest in their product was to scare the public into believing that their tap water was somehow polluted and unsafe to drink and that their pure product would be better for you and safer which is actually not the case considering that the water very often comes from the same place. Then there is the problem of the garbage that it is generating. All of those plastic bottles that people dispose of after they consume their bottled water ends up eventually in city landfills because while much of it is recycled these days not all of it is and the stuff ends up taking centuries to break down and when it does can sometimes, depending on the type of plastic the bottles are made of, emit dangerous chemicals over time such as Bisphenol (BPA) which has been linked in studies to an increased risk for the development of Breast cancer and Prostate cancer for those who are excessively exposed to the chemical.
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