why drinking bottled water is just not smart

Posted on | October 12, 2008 |

imagine that your cell phone could use either the rechargeable battery that is inside of it right now, or AAA batteries that you purchase from the store. you’re a busy professional with lots of things to do. your cell phone runs out of battery. do you plug it into the charger you have connected to an outlet in your bedroom? or do you leave your house, walk or drive to the store and pick up a 20-pack of batteries for your phone on a sunday? now imagine that those batteries weigh about as much as a bag of rice and are just as annoying to carry. oh, i forgot to mention that the store-bought batteries cost about 4000 times as much as the electricity to simply charge your phone at home. one more thing - the batteries are really bad for our earth. would you still do it?

if you consider yourself a smart and savvy individual, you probably wouldn’t, and yet so many americans do something very similar in their homes. for some reason, we’ve been taught that tap water is bad and we should go out of our way to go to the store and pay a 4000x markup for bottles of water that either are tap water, filtered tap water or either about as good or worse than tap water. why? many of my friends majored in finance and pride themselves on being informed consumers, but they still lug home bottles of water from the store. it’s like something out of a twilight zone episode. what’s even weirder is that at restaurants, most of us choose tap over sparkling because we know that we have to pay extra for sparkling. if we are smart about it when we go out to eat, why do we all of a sudden lose that insight when we return to our own homes?

now, some of the smartest people in the world drink bottled water (i glimpsed some super intelligent scientists drinking it the other night at a panel discussion on clean energy!) so don’t feel too bad. sometimes we just don’t want to be rude by refusing it, or we’re outside of our homes, thirsty, and there is nothing else to drink. but next time you’re at the store, why not do your back, your wallet and the earth a favor and skip the bottled water. all three will thank you.

Category: Confessions of a Former Urban Piggy
Tags: bottled > frugal > heavy > savvy > smart > tap > water

Comments

4 Responses to “why drinking bottled water is just not smart”

Eric Lee
October 12th, 2008 @ 1:33 pm

I found your site on Google and read a few of your other entires. Nice Stuff. I’m looking forward to reading more from you.
sO
October 14th, 2008 @ 1:10 pm

smart post!
i like it.

i received a water bottle from
nycares.org as a gift and it’s been quite
useful!

i refill my 1 liter water bottle every
morning at the office kitchen where we have
a water filter.
for some reason, the others in my office
think i’m crazy for drinking tap water
and it almost got to me!
a good number of people here order cases
of poland spring.
poland spring offers to recycle the plastic
if you place them back into the cardboard bases, but sadly many people don’t abide.

i have to admit … i’m still scared of
drinking tap water straight up.

and when i’m @ a restaurant, i’m just happy
to get a clean glass! x)
sO
October 14th, 2008 @ 1:14 pm

Oh, and as some may already know -
tap water is good for your teeth!

Plus, many people are not aware that brands
such as dasani and aquafina bottle filtered
tap water!

*conned*
revisiting brita’s filter for good campaign : Swyyne
December 17th, 2008 @ 2:42 pm

[...] so, why are you still drinking bottled water? [...]

why is this a site?

swyyne has always been an experiment for me. with all of the other super eco sites out there, i've been feeling like i want to contribute something just a bit different. so for now, here are my random musings.