{"id":2846,"date":"2008-03-26T16:03:43","date_gmt":"2008-03-26T22:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/2008\/03\/26\/environmental-defense-fund-bottles-bottles-everywhere%e2%80%a6\/"},"modified":"2008-03-26T16:03:43","modified_gmt":"2008-03-26T22:03:43","slug":"environmental-defense-fund-bottles-bottles-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/environmental-defense-fund-bottles-bottles-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmental Defense Fund: Bottles, Bottles, Everywhere\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is by Ramon Cruz<\/a>, Senior Policy Analyst for Living Cities at Environmental Defense Fund.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s ironic. In many parts of the world, there is no clean drinking water. Here in the U.S., pure, drinkable water flows out of every tap, and yet Americans buy a staggering amount of bottled water. We pay big bucks for it, too – over $15 billion a year.<\/p>\n

Worst of all, the bottles are overflowing our landfills, and contribute to global warming.<\/p>\n

Take a look at this video from Doug James<\/a>, and then check out these surprising facts.<\/p>\n

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More than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water<\/a>, including Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani. Despite this, bottled water consumption is growing at 10 percent a year, faster than any other beverage. We drink 15 times more bottled water today than we did in 1976.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t mean we\u2019re healthier, despite the ads. <\/strong>Federal regulations for municipal water are far more stringent. Bottled water rules allow higher levels of many contaminants, with more lenient requirements for filtration, testing and reporting. See NRDC\u2019s bottled water report for details of contaminants by brand<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Earth isn’t healthier for it, either<\/strong>. According to the Pacific Institute\u2019s fact sheet [PDF]<\/a>, manufacturing the 30+ billion plastic water bottles we bought in 2006:<\/p>\n