Lester Brown Coins Bottled Water a "Con Job"

The Director of Earth Policy Institute, Lester Brown, said on Treehugger.com, "the industry has done a real con job on the American public. I mean, designer water? Water that we pay more for than we pay for gasoline or for milk? We can easily provide the people of the planet with clean water."

So why do we continue to fall for it? In the name of convenience, expert branding, and a unfounded fear that tap water isn't as clean or as nourishing as beautifully packaged bottled water. The thing is, it just may be our false fear of unclean tap water that becomes our self-fulfilling prophecy.

The plastic manufacturing process, along with the fact that we throw away more than 30 billion plastic water bottles a year, (nearly all of which end up in landfills) doesn't bode well for a clean water supply a few decades from now. Especially since the bottled water we drink travels an average 2,500-5,000+ miles to our local store, emitting particulates into the air that fills with moisture and falls to the ground as raindrops into our water table.

All of those billions of tons of carbon emissions that are pumped into the atmosphere and the toxic landfill chemicals that filter back into the water supply as materials such as plastic break down (which takes thousands of years), can all be avoided by drinking from the tap! Go figure.

Comments

[Larry]

If you refrigerate the tap water, it tastes just as good as cold bottled water.-