Save $1,400 a Year By Drinking Tap Water
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 11.26.08
At least that’s the assertion of Eric Yaverbaum, of Tappening, an anti-bottled water enterprise, as outlined in an interview with the excellent Wend magazine: “And if you don’t buy my environmental argument, buy my financial one… financially speaking if you drink 8 glasses a day you will spend $1400 a year buying bottled water. If you drink 8 glasses a day and you get it from your tap you’ll spend 49 cents. This would be a really good year to save your $1400 on a product that not only hurts the environment but it hurts your pocketbook.”
The interviews is peppered with comments that have been expressed many a time on these pages. Like “Go to India, you name the 3rd world country and Look what they need to do to get drinking water and we get it for free in our homes and our apartments and we still buy bottled water, that’s crazy.” And they have the statistics to show just how loony the whole bottled water industry is.
Tappening is a project of Eric Yaverbaum, whose daytime business is the public relations firm, Ericho Communications, and DiMassimo Goldstein, whose company, DIGO, specialises in being ‘brand advocates.’ As you might expect from such backgrounds the guys are rather adept with putting a convincing story together. In this case it is one that TreeHugger has long been vocal on.
And we’re rather impressed with the research Tappening has gathered to add weight to their message. (Although the stats do overlap into the soft drink market also.) Apparently Americans buy 28 billion water bottles annually, which, if we read correctly, uses the equal of 17 million barrels of oil, sufficient to fuel 1 million cars for 12 months worth of driving. With only 23% of discarded PET bottles recycled it costs American cities about $70 million to clean up the discarded bottles yearly.
On the other side of the ledger, most municipal tap water has to be tested for E.coli, fecal coliform bacteria, Cryptosporidium and/or Giardia, whereas the much vaunted bottled water does not. Yet bottled water can “cost as much as $10 per gallon compared to less than a penny per gallon for tap waters.”
As Eric Yaverbaum puts it in the Wend Interview, “Why are we just sitting around to do nothing, waiting for the next generation to rescue us? It’s my generation, I believe, that should be seriously investing itself in that process if we care at all what this planet is like after we’re going.”
Now admittedly, as Brian pointed out when we were first mentioned Tappening, the guys are also selling their own water bottles, albeit theirs are durable and resuable BPA-free plastic and stainless steel versions. But, even with nearly 6 million page views on their website, we doubt the guys got into this gig to sell a few water bottles. Their message does seem genuine.
And may we paraphrase that message thus: Stop buying bottle water, it’s messing with the environment through unwarranted materials extraction and wastage, as well as contributing to climate change. Not only are glaciers shrinking, but so are the volume of readies in your wallet or purse.
::Tappening, via Wend magazine
More Bottled Water on TreeHugger
Bottled Water - Lifting the Lid.
Tap Water or Bottled Water: Which is Better?
Bottled Water Drinkers Are The New Smokers
I guess it easier to pick a bottle at the marketplace than to demand better public services, which in turn would mean more strict and coordinated measures to guarantee the preservation of the natural environment. It's a chain, we shouldn't be the weakest link.
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Writers Note: We have covered stories where better public services have been developed, for example: Bottled Water Scourge Countered by Manly Council’s Free Filtered Water
Bottled water is a waste of money for sure. It is also not good for your health. I live in the country and my water comes from a well. It is delicious, I invested $10 into a stainless steel re-usable bottle, it is safe to use, and far more cost effective than one time use plastic bottles
I'm an unrepentant user of bottled water - it's well known that city water is full of other people's meds etc that filtering doesn't remove - nor do I fancy the 'distilled water' ultrafilters that give water our bodies were never designed for, and actually leeches minerals out of the body. I buy good quality mineral water that's not from a supermarket, and make up for my eco-sins elsewhere.
Practically the only thing I've seen so far that might make me repent is the air distiller on Treehugger the other day. There was a lot of discussion of this as a solution for desert states - but I think it could equally be applied to rainy places like London, England where water is plentiful, but no-one fancies drinking the tap version.
Well if you are addicted to drinking bottled water, can have a small one at your home. Fill it up when ever you need to go out for that long. An even cheaper alternative is to wait till you reach back home, if the wait is not too long. And then there is that goodwill of helping the thirsty with some water. The goodwill comes back to you sometime.
Here is my little Italian experience, I live in a small city in the nord area of Milano. After our local council decided to put a "water dispenser" in the center of the residential quartier, everythink changed. Now more and more people is organised with glass and steel bottle, and they get still water for free, sparkling water for 5 €cent/liter and cold sparkling water for 10 €cent/liter. Pretty cheap, don't you? The dispenser station became a kind of "social place" where people meet and chat, and I really think that people likes to go there. Firstable beacause the "taste" of the water is really, really better of the bottle one... then because is cheap and is near home. In addition, in my family we started again in drinking the "normal" house tap water... I think that it started a kind of "trustworthy" process. Great :-)
Here is my little Italian experience, I live in a small city in the nord area of Milano. After our local council decided to put a "water dispenser" in the center of the residential quartier, everythink changed. Now more and more people is organised with glass and steel bottle, and they get still water for free, sparkling water for 5 €cent/liter and cold sparkling water for 10 €cent/liter. Pretty cheap, don't you? The dispenser station became a kind of "social place" where people meet and chat, and I really think that people likes to go there. Firstable beacause the "taste" of the water is really, really better of the bottle one... then because is cheap and is near home. In addition, in my family we started again in drinking the "normal" house tap water... I think that it started a kind of "trustworthy" process. Great :-)
Why does Trehugger never complete the tap-water coverage with a head-on discussion of the issues with tap water in many communities, namely: fluoride. You have to RO all of the minerals out of the water to get the fluoride out. There are other issues such as what lurks in the pipes along the way. Not to mention taste. Tap water where I live tastes like chlorine (to me) and there is fluoride in it.
What about finding people who are working on this RO and fluoride issue to allow for re-mineralization of tap water, or somehow to get the fluoride out without removing other beneficial minerals?
I think that TreeHugger sometimes knowingly uses rose-colored glasses just to get the issues out there. Granted, you are not a full-blown journalistic establishment...as much marketing in your writing as there is subject matter.
What about a little editorial work on this issue so people can make decisions based on all of the facts on the ground?
Glad you're bringing it up, but research and discussion is incomplete.
I still love ya lots...
Kate: ug. Get in your Hummer and go back to Arkansas.
... Brendan, more like pedal back to my ecoboat in London. My point, which Julia also eloquently makes, is that the claims of the 'tap water is just as good' brigade are just not true, particularly in cities.
For almost everything else, I can find just as good green alternatives - or abstain altogether. That's not so with water. This is a problem that needs fixing.
"Rose colored glasses". Huh. This is a great story.
Personally I have been a strong believer in the many messages (and purpose) that Tappening somehow keeps in the public eye now for what seems like a good long while. Although I went to their website and from what I can ascertain, they have been around for one year.
That group changed the debate. They were exactly what many of us who have been trying to deliver a very similar message needed. Congress actually cared there for a few minutes. Sales of bottled water are trending in the wrong direction. Tappening didn't start this debate. It's been brewing for two decades. But Tappening was like the big bad cavalry that came riding over the hill that no one saw coming. And suddenly the message is being heard. And people are changing their behavior. That's impressive. Many of us are very appreciative to have people like that engaged in any environmental they want to be.
Those facts in the article are correct. I've seen and read them from many credible sources (i.e. not just Tappening).
I'm pretty sure I did read about Tappening first here. But they do seem to have the knack of being everywhere. And they seem to have staying power. A lot of us sure do hope so.
While I agree with the idea that drinking tap water is far preferable to buying water in a bottle, I think that the public perception that the quality of tap water is questionabe is not totally unfounded.
Enough research has been done to support the idea that tap water, especially from municipal sources where chlorine is still used as a means of ridding the water of microbial contamnants, contains chlorine byproducts and other toxins that can be harmful to a persons health.
Bottled water is a ridiculous long-term solution, o that there is no doubt. I lived in Mexico for four years, in an area where even the Mexicans would not drink the water. The solution I used was a gravity fed water filter that was highly efficient and long-lasting. I went so far as to buy a web site selling the product. I now live in Alabama and still use it as a second line of defense against any contamination that may slip through from the municpal supply.
IThe Berkey purifier is a simple, cost-effective, highly reliable solution that I would encourage every one to check out. Information can be found at the following URL - www.drinking-water-filter-system.com/water-filter-systems.html. I would be very interested in your comments on the product.
Thank you for your informative Post.
A discussion of the ramifications of privatization of water resources on the global water crisis would be interesting as well.
Daniel Noll