What is the bottled water phenomenon?In the early 1990s, folks in North America and Europe began to lose their faith in the purity of their local government-supplied drinking water. Some folks objected to fluoride or chlorine being added to the water by the local water company. Others had heard of people getting sick from contaminated tap water a few states away. They started buying and drinking bottled water, thinking that water in plastic containers, which looked so clear and clean in their pristine bottles in the store, really came from pure mountain springs. Therefore, they reasoned, it must be safer.
Suddenly, water in plastic containers took off like wildfire. It even became a sort of status symbol. You can't go into local gym or spa and find anyone without a bottle of water in his or her gym bag. No-one, absolutely no-one, ever drinks from a water fountain anymore, as they did back in the Dark Ages.
The bottled water craze spread all over the world. In 2010, it is estimated that 50 billion bottles of water are used in the United States per year. Worldwide, the estimate is that 200 billion bottles are used per year. That's a heck of a lot of bottles! Think of the magnitude of a pile of those plastic containers going to a landfill. Each bottle is only used once. Furthermore, think of the amount of money each person spends on bottled water each year. It is enormous!
Is that stuff in the pretty container with the picture of the mountain spring on it really safer than tap water?
The EPA regulates the quality of tap water, which is tested several times a day, by law. The FDA regulates bottled water which is not tested that often. It is tested perhaps once a week when some containers in the bottling plant are pulled out for testing.
In 2010, a four-year study conducted by the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) estimated that about 25% of all jugged h2o is just tap water that perhaps has been run through a "purification process". Indeed, two of the hottest-selling brands, bottled by very famous soft-drink bottlers, originate from tap water.
Do you really feel safer drinking bottled water? Considering the outrageous cost, and the pile of plastic containers you are obliged to recycle, just to get the 5 cents back they charge on each plastic container nowadays, even if you are not civic-minded enough to do it for the sake of the environment, and the fact that you don't know if that pricey bottle of water is just tap water you could get for free from your own kitchen faucet, anyhow. Do you still want to be part of the Bottled Water Phenomenon? But what is the alternative?
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Peggy_Jayne
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