$10,000 Sandwich and Blue Gold

Can you imagine paying $10,000 for a sandwich. That is 2,000 times more than a sandwich should cost!!

And yet that is what most Americans pay, when they buy Half a Billion Gallons of Bottled Water EVERY WEEK.


Ok, so you roll your eyes and ignore it... ie, YOUR addiction to plastic water bottles. You throw up your hands saying its not in your control. You think bottled water is safe!?

Read this, think again and thank me! And if you kick the habbit, I will thank you. And YOU WILL THANK YOURSELF  that you didnt turn into the MONSTER you see in the picture on the left.

- Plastic Water Bottles are a health hazard: Plastic bottles travel hundreds of miles in the heat to get to your store. And those sunny miles work their wonders on the plastic, leeching away harmful chemicals into the water you consume.

- Its Expensive, dammit!! If all you drink is bottled water, you are paying about $1,500 more per year for water! Kick this habbit and you could save enough money to watch movies on netflix for 13 years!!!

- The Bottled Water Companies are pulling wool over your eyes. Why? Because in most cases they fill those bottles with ordinary water any way (not mineral water which you want to believe it is) with some processing at times.

- Bottled water is NOT safer than municipal water. Want to know how your community water supply scores? Check out the Environmental Working Group's National Tap Water Database.

- Tapping Natural Water sources damages ecosystems: If mineral water is indeed used in your favorite brand, its not good either. Its "damaging ecosystems by sucking water from underground aquifers that are the source of water for nearby streams, wells, and farms. Lakes and wet lands are also damaged" (http://www.sierraclub.org/)

- WATER IS A HUMAN RIGHT that is under attack. But like all other human rights, capitalism is making a mockery of it. Corporatization means communities that live near water bodies do not benefit from it. This leads to social unrest. Coke set up a bottled water facility in India, which contaminated the water supply and depleted resources for the local people. The PBS documentary film Thirst, shows how rapid worldwide privatization of municipal water suppliesis affecting local economies.

- Bottled water means less attention to public systems. Public Systems need their leaks fixed and with a small investment they can be made more reliable than the water in your bottle. The more we run away from public water supply, the richer the bottled water suppliers become and the more we get addicted to their crap (because multinationals are stepping in to buy groundwater and other water sources). And its not just overseas. Maybe its gone too far in New Jersey  already.

- The process of making the plastics releases toxins such as nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide and benzene

- Plastic comes from oil (as if we arent already addicted to oil for our energy needs). The entire energy costs of processing the final product before it gets to you is equalent to filling One-Fouth of that same bottle with oil.

- Nearly 90 percent of water bottles are NOT recycled and wind up in landfills where it takes thousands of years for the plastic to decompose.

WHAT CAN YOU DO:
- Use this helpful guide to talk to your friends, children, parents, coworkers, neighbors.

- Learn how to promote tap water within your office, campus or public place with our guide: How Your Organization Can Promote Tap Water

- Take Back the Tap Pledge. If you don't like the taste of municipal water, use a carbon filter to fix it.

- Dine at restaurants that have pledged not to serve bottled water.

- Hosting an event? Make it bottled water free with the help of this guide: Free Your Event from Bottled Water.

- Watch and Host a movie screening of the Thirst. Or some of the other films on the subject - FLOW, Blue Gold, The Water Front or Tapped, powerful documentaries sure to get the message across. And make sure to make it a bottle-free event.

- Do you know when was the last time your office water cooler was cleaned?

- Do NOT reuse plastic water bottles. The more they are reused, the more chemicals they leech. Learn about the Plastic Numbering System before reusing any plastic.

- Just get a stainless steel bottle and fill it up. Spend your savings elsewhere


LEARN MORE

- Sierra Club's Fact Sheet on Bottled Water
- Sierra Club's Campagn against Bottled Water
- Watch: The Truth about Bottled Water