You would probably be shocked to see somebody trying to sell bottled air. It’s a resource abundantly available all around us for free and anyone trying to put a label on it and charge for its consumption would be immediately declared insane. Yet somehow, many of us don’t see anything strange in buying bottled water. Tap water is safe to drink in most European countries. The price of a liter of tap water is around 2500 times less than the price of bottled water – and the water sold in plastic bottles is often simply… filtered tap water. Where it is potable, the tap water is under close supervision of the authorities – EU countries have agreed to conform to strict regulations regarding the quality of tap water – and in consequence it was shown to often be as safe and healthy – if not safer – than the water sold in bottles.

Apart from the ridiculous price margin, put on something available practically for free in every house and office, there are other reasons why not to buy bottled water:

  • Making plastic bottles requires extraction of oil and the production process uses vast quantities of energy
  • The bottled water then needs to be transported to the store – and from there to your office or activity which further adds up to greenhouse gas emissions. Water in glass bottles is much heavier than that in plastic ones so it requires even more energy to be transported
  • As soon as you drank the water, the plastic bottle becomes waste. Unless it is recycled, it can either rot in the landfill for hundreds of years or be burned in the incinerator releasing toxic waste to the atmosphere.
  • Money needed to deal with all the waste and pollution created by consuming bottled water diverts attention and investment from a very important issue: providing access to safe drinking water for all. Clean water should be considered a basic human right, rather than a commodity that corporations can profit on.

 

 

 

Some quick facts:

  • Oil used to produce annual supply of plastic bottles in the US alone would be enough to fuel 1 million cars for a year.
  • Nearly 25% of all bottled water crosses country borders to reach its consumer.
  • Bottled water generates 1.5 million tonnes of plastic waste annually. It’s a weight of 150 Eiffel towers.
  • According to different statistics, between 50 and 80% of plastic PET bottles used in EU in 2011 were not recycled.
  • According to UN’s Millenium Development Goals, USD 10 billion should be spend each year to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to drinking water by 2015. To compare, USD 100 billion is spend annually worldwide on bottled water.

Our waterbottles are made from stainless steel, a fully recyclable material, which is also the safest one for your health.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is an organic compound, found in many plastic and metal packagings. When leaked into the food and water and consumed by humans, constitutes health hazard including developmental issues, cancers and cardiovascular disease. Both plastic and aluminium re-usable water bottles may contain BPA and when tested, many of these products were found to be leaking BPA, causing potential health hazard to consumers. The stainless steel bottles and containers were found to be the safest for handling food. Although both plastic and  aluminium are lighter and cheaper materials it is definitely worth it to invest a bit more and use products that are sustainable and healthy.

You can now start saving the environment and money by ordering a water bottle from International Young Naturefriends. To order, write now to iynf@iynf.org