Getting Ready for Earth Day: Save Water When You Drink
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA 
on 04.16.07
We've covered water on two occasions before in our Earth Day guides, and today we'll concentrate on being smart with the water we drink.
1) Bottled water is tremendously wasteful -- prepare to catch your jaw as it drops when you see the final numbers -- so we recommend staying away from it, when at all possible.
2) Aside from having a terribly high ecological cost, it can have some pretty strange stuff in it, like stuff to make you skinny, infused with good intentions, and gold.
3) Though some bottled waters like Biota and Jivita are being bottled in biodegradable, compostable plastic, they aren't recyclable and chances are they won't break down in your backyard compost heap.
4) Other companies like Ethos and HtoO are using their bottled-water monies for good, but there's no escaping the fact that it's a huge waste.
5) TreeHugger's advice? Drink tap water, which is cleaner and healthier than bottled in a surprising percentage of locations (learn more at the National Tapwater Database); if you're on the go, plan ahead and fill up a durable, non-toxic container to take with you.
Get more water-efficiency tips in TreeHugger's How to Green Your Water Guide and stay tuned for more tips in preparation for Earth Day.
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
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- French Pressed Coffee: A Surprisingly Green Luxury, On the Cheap
- Meet Stanley, The Company Bringing Free Water to Bonnaroo
You are so right about bottled water in general. I know the tap water in my community is safe (I had it tested) but I still filter it and when I am out and about I love the Better Water Filter that is attached to a corn based bottle. When I'd done it goes right into my compost bin. I bought mine at Smart Spaces Inside and Out.
Don't forget cheaper. Tap water costs you less and costs the environment less.
GJ
http://www.60in3.com
Don't forget cheaper. Tap water costs you less and costs the environment less.
GJ
The only place I can't seem to escape this is the one night of the month I go out dancing. If I'm at a nightclub and order water, I invariably get handed a bottle and it's hard to have a discussion with a harried bartender about getting it from the tap...and even then, it'll come in a plastic cup. Given how much I exert myself, I can drink up to a quart of water in a couple of hours.
Can anyone give me advice on how to avoid bottled water when I'm traveling in Europe? In a few countries, its the law that in a restaurant they have to give you tap water if you ask (and sometimes you have to pay for your tap water), but in several countries, it isn't - for example, in Belgium, I found no way around bottled water in more than one restaurant.
Cute Knut the polar bear was killed today by hot weather in Berlin.
It,s really sad.
http://blog.rbb-online.de/roller/knut/entry/20070416#comment-1176761206000
Here is an interesting link for some of you
www.ethos-water.com
Read carefully....the story is not what it seems.
Sarah