The Story Of Bottled Water | Promoting Filtering Water At Home
A short film called The Story of Bottled Water by Anne Leonard was released Thursday, which was World Water Day. In The story of Bottled Water, Leonard shows how corporations have convinced Americans to spend extra cash on half a billion bottles of water every week though most people in this country can get it for free. “Purified” bottled water has become a $ 5 billion-a-year industry in the U.S. and ironically threatens public health and the environment.
On World Water Day
According to an article on HuffingtonPost.com, Anne Leonard said she chose World Water Day to release The Story of Bottled Water because it is:
“a good day to pause and consider the insanity of a global economy where 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water while other people spend billions on a bottled product that’s no cleaner, harms people and the environment and costs up to 2,000 times the price of tap water.”
Leonard, in The Story of Bottled Water, compares spending money on bottle water to buying a shrink-wrapped sandwich made by unknown hands costing $ 10,000. She blames multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns commissioned by industrial giants like Coca Cola and Pepsi and Nestle to make Americans afraid to drink tap water.
Toxic chemicals in bottled water
Although people may believe that they are drinking purified water, The Story of Bottled Water points out that it is often times no safer than tap water. It also could be less safe. The plastic in the bottle contains toxic chemicals that can leach into the water inside.
A report on mindfully.org states that Water bottles are made from various plastics, including Bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical that leaches into the water in the bottles to some degree. Bisphenal-A, it turns out, is a hormone disruptor that mimics estrogen and is linked to early onset puberty, declining sperm counts, obesity and breast and prostate cancer. In Los Angeles, a billion-dollar class action suit was filed in March 2007 against five leading manufacturers of baby bottles containing Bisphenal-A.
Home filtered water
Leonard points out that bottled water costs up to 2,000 times more than tap water, yet up to 40 percent of it is simply filtered tap water. Consumers can filter water at home with products costing anywhere from $ 15 to $ 120. Many other facts about bottled water that Leonard calls “inconvenient” truths are listed in The Story of Bottled Water:
- Bottled water is subject to fewer health regulations than tap water.
- Municipalities often need money loans to cover more than the $70 million it costs to landfill water bottles alone each year, according to Corporate Accountability International.
- Making the plastic water bottles used in the U.S. takes enough oil and energy to fuel a million cars, not including the fuel required to transport the bottles from the factory.
Use metal water bottles
The Story of Bottled Water, however, does see a bright side to its argument.
Leonard points out that few people are spending money now on bottled water, as numbers are showing a slight decline in sales for the first time ever in 2009. More people are using reusable metal water bottles, passing on bottled water at the store and filtering their own water at home. Aluminum and steel water bottles cost anywhere between $ 5.95 and $ 19.95. Certainly beats a $ 10,000 sandwich.