Saturday, October 4, 2008

Green Up Saturday


Still buying bottled water?

I have read that in the last couple of years, Americans have been spending over 15 billion dollars on bottled water.

BILLION !! Money down the drain?I certainly think so. About 24% of bottled water is just filtered tap water.

You can get the same quality of water by installing a filter on your faucet at home. If you are like Farmer Dad, and feel the cost ($100 or less) is prohibitive, You might want to consider this,

you can buy a half-liter of bottled water for $1.35.

If you filled this same bottle with filtered tap water once a day, it would take roughly 10 years

before you spent that $1.35. However, if you purchased one bottle of water every day,

after 10 years you will have spent $4,927.50.

There are also some pretty good environmental and socially responsible reasons that just strengthen the case for the tap as well.

  • Plastic is a petroleum based product.
  • The pollutants associated with the manufacture and transportation of these plastic bottles is unnecessarily damaging to the environment.
  • Of the 50 billion plastic water bottles used last year, about 38 billion went straight to landfills.
  • The plastic in those land filled bottles is worth around $1 billion.
  • 12 billion bottles were recycled, but remember that plastic does not recycle into the same quality plastic. It can only be recycled a finite number of times before it can no longer be recycled.
  • When over 1 billion people in the world don’t have access to safe drinking water, buying bottled water with all its associated financial, environmental and social costs seems irresponsible – especially when a home filter gives you the same or better quality water than bottled water.
Want to take the pledge to break the bottled water habit?
Click here..

http://www.newdream.org/emails/ta54.html



We are all about saving the planet's resources around here, especially when we can
save some of our own green at the same time! How's that for a Green Up Saturday?


7 comments:

Wisteria said...

We quit over a year ago, though we were never huge users of bottled water. I bought each child a permanent water bottle for their sports activities and both are proud of their contribution. They even shun plastic when pushed by well-meaning folks.

Cher Mere said...

Sounds good! We have a Brita filter at home. But sometimes we forget wen we are out and about. Thank you for the reminder and the inspiration.

Patricia said...

I'm embarrassed to admit I was one of those people who bought into the bottled water craze for years. I am happy to say that we have been using tap water for months now. I've been meaning to ask you - Do you grow vegetables in the winter?

Gottfredsen said...

Oh I feel like I have been neglecting you lately. I am so sorry that I have not been commenting. I really have been meaning to. I did want to say you have a great post about this. We have been trying to do so much better about this. We had the one that you attach to the faucet but were have to much problems with it. It kept breaking with in a month. So we switched to one of the big ones that sits in the fridge. The boys are even drinking more water now because they find it fun to pour. Ok enough of my rambling. Hope things are good.

Garden State Kate said...

Thank you all for stopping by and leaving a message. (hugs)

H- no worries...I'm in the same boat!
C-We have a Brita too, we're going to be working on our sink, and I'm hoping to upgrade to a faucet model.

P- Yes, not as much as I would like, but usually greens and lettuce, carrots stay in the ground until we need them..I keep trying to move up to doing more year round, but DH is so busy..it's hard to do it all. ;-)

W- I'm still cracking up at the "plastic pusher" concept. ;-)

Wendy said...

We had to buy bottled water for the past 3 years. I'm glad we now live in a home where we can drink the tap water! It tastes a bit like chlorine, but it is worlds better than drinking rust. lol

mavibu said...

Kate, I'm on the same bandwagon. We have greatly increased our recycling, to the point that some weeks, we only have one bag of actual trash (we're also compostin, but that's another story). I'm always thirsty (due to breastfeeding) and feel sooo guilty when I forget my own water bottle and HAVE to stop somewhere and get a bottle!

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Plato said...

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