GO GREEN Needham – Here’s How: Say No to Bottled Water

Learn to Live More Sustainably – One Step at-a-time

Do you really need to use bottled water at home and at the office?  Bottled water isn’t necessarily cleaner or better for you than tap water – in fact, often it is tap water that’s been filtered.  You can do the same thing by using a Brita pitcher or installing a filter on your faucet.  You’re already paying a substantial sum to get clean tap water, so you might as well drink it.  And what about when you’re out?  Get a reusable container (readily available at local stores, including Whole Foods) and fill it with tap water.  Or check your cabinets – you probably already have one!

Environmental Costs for Plastic Water Bottles:

• Wasting Water: Including making the bottle, it takes an estimated 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water.

• Trash – most water bottles are not recycled, and end up in landfills, incinerated or in waterways: Americans use more than 73 billion half-liter plastic water bottles each year, but only about 1/3 are recycled. In 2013, an estimated 2 million tons of PET was wasted.

• Fossil fuels – plastic water bottles are made out of oil:   The Pacific Institute estimated that in 2006, bottling water in the U.S. required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the energy to transport them.  (Note: This is even higher now, since Americans are using even more plastic bottles.)
  

Sources:

Environmental Working Group (EWG), Five Reasons to Skip Bottled Water, 2013

EPA Fact Sheet 2014

Container Recycling Institute, Plastic Facts and Statistics

Other reasons:

• saves you money  (US households spent $11.8 billion dollars on bottled water in 2012)
• saves you time/energy lugging the bottled water home (and then to the RTS to recycle them)
• concerns about plastic bottles leaching chemicals.

Learn more about other easy ways to live more sustainably on our Green Tips – Here’s How page