Life Cycle: The Hidden Cost of $40 "Bling Water."

Life Cycle is a series of posts that looks at the life and death of everyday things.

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you.

In the United States, we pay for our tap water (either through a direct bill or taxes), and then we pay again when we buy bottled water - forty percent of which comes from municipal sources, which means it's still essentially tap water.

Why are we paying for it twice? We pay more for water than we do for milk or gasoline (somehow less cute than the common wisdom that wine is cheaper than water in France).

And Mother Earth pays, too. MSN money honey Anthony Mirhaydari sums up the eco-challenge nicely:

A recent report by the Swiss Gas and Water Association finds that bottled water has 100 times the environmental impact of tap water. The Sierra Club notes that bottled water produces 1.5 million tons of plastic waste each year - the vast majority of which ends up in our landfills and oceans. According to two oceanographers with the British Antarctic Survey, while strolling along the shores of Spitsbergen Island up in the Arctic ocean, where mankind's doomsday Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located, one can find a piece of plastic detritus every 15 feet or so.

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We use water to manufacture the petroleum-based plastic bottle the water comes in, and we use fossil fuels to ship water from Fiji or France to our tables.

Hello, people. We have the privilege of living in a country where we can drink our water. But we've been seduced by the beverage industry into believing only they can quench our thirst with colored, caffeinated, vitaminized, electrolyted water. We have become so parched that we can't walk down the street without toting a single-use plastic bottle touting the magical effects of its water source.

Apparently, Kabbalah Water will heal us and Bling Water will define us. At the Bling H20 website, Bling Water "creator" Kevin Boyd describes noticing on Hollywood studio lots that "you could tell a lot about a person by the bottled water they carried." First of all, didn't god create water? Secondly, the water is bottled in Dandridge, Tennessee - since when is Southern Tennessee a spring of L.A. status? Yes, Dandrige's water ranks very highly on EPA's water quality index, but why are we spending so much money ($40 for Bling's "Go Green" 750ml bottle) on cross-continental water instead of cleaning up our local waterways? Tinseltown's water is so polluted with run-off and industrial contamination that perhaps water by way of Tenessee does make sense.

Here's what the less blingy among us do:
1) Work to identify problems at the source, pushing for the protection of Wetlands.
2) Reduce the amount of toxic junk we flush down and rinse away (including pharmaceuticals).
3) Lobby our local officials to protect our source water.
4) Use it sparingly: in the yard, in the house, everywhere.
5) Carry our own bottles (Coated aluminum is Siman's preference, Sarah goes with BPA-free plastic) and proudly fill up at water fountains and taps.

We are not naïve. We know there's so much work to do around water - who has it, how they use it, if it's clean, how it gets carried, who pollutes it, who squanders it, how much of it we have left, and so on. On the one hand it makes our small changes seem, well, small. On the other, we know that even the micro-movements are crucial.

The marketers are right. We can't live without water. But we can live without the overzealous way it's being sold to us. Drink that in.

This post was written by Simran Sethi and Sarah Smarsh. Thanks to the University of Kansas School of Journalism and Lacey Johnston for research assistance and tengpow for the image. You can find previews of these posts every week on Green Options. Hear Simran talk more about the connection between our stuff and our planet - and water issues - this Wednesday, 8/27 at the IDP in New York.

Comments

[rigdenpoet]

Bottled water is possibly the biggest consumer scam ever perpetuated.

Get a filter, a refillable bottle, and give the money you save to a good cause.

Why does everyone fall for this stuff?

[heathermerete]

I used to assuage my bottled water-buying guilt by refilling my Fiji or Poland Springs and using it many times. Until I found out that the #1 plastic usually used to bottle water is only intended for single use. That is, it breaks down and leeches chemicals into the water over time. Ugh.

And if it breaks down and leeches chemicals over time, I can only imagine what it's doing in a landfill.

Water filters rock.

[Simran Sethi - Huffpost Blogger]

You said it, sister. What boggles my mind is how the FDA can rule that the Bisphenol A leached from polycarbonate plastic bottles is okay when Canada and the UK have banned the substance. What do they know that our FDA doesn't - or won't - acknowledge?

[Sarah Smarsh - Huffpost Blogger]

My grandma used to freeze water bottles and then send them out with us during the wheat harvest here in Kansas, so that they'd slowly melt throughout the morning but remain cold. I believe the jury is still out on how freezing and heating certain plastics contributes to "leeching," but the water often tasted like plastic, so one might assume I drank plastic. Yum.

[jerkolber]

There are so many simple things we can do around water. The edit facility I am working at now has gotten rid of the water machine and the bottled water, and installed a filter on the tap water. They keep mugs in the freezer if someone wants a "frosty mug of water". They've completely eliminated the water and fuel and petroleum impact of bottled water and jugs of water (and reduced their costs). The show I just shot gave out free BPA Free nalgene bottles to each crew and cast member on the first day of the shot and then got big gallon jugs everyone could refill from. All of these little steps add up. Big steps? Figuring out how to convince people to landscape their lawns and golf courses in ways that are native and appropriate for the environment they live in. Two minute showers most days of the week. Eating less meat (livestock production is a HUGE water pollutant).

[Simran Sethi - Huffpost Blogger]

Jer, you are a rock star. I would add low-flow toilets and more awareness around water leaks to the list, as well.

[elephantwaylon]

Read this article. Wake up. Buy Sigg or stainless steel bottle. Buy water filter for sink. Fill water daily. Carry bottle during day. Drink. Refill. Save money. Drink better water. Repeat.

Another great post, Sarah and Simran. Amazing bottled water is more expensive than gas that's drilled, stored, shipped, stored, shipped, stored, reshipped then finally pumped. What a world.

[Simran Sethi - Huffpost Blogger]

Thank you so much, elephantwaylon. And my biggest pet peeve? Never, ever throw water down the drain! Water a plant instead.

[LeftRight]

And this is why I was always drinking the tap water (except on long trips, when I would buy one bottle, and then refill it several times). Now that we've got a water filtration system in the house, the wife and kids drink it too!

[Simran Sethi - Huffpost Blogger]

Right on, leftright. I actually just took a roadtrip to Minnesota and carried a jug with me that I refilled with tap once I got to my destination. Real cups in the car - it was so posh.