Cheers to Zion National Park calling attention to the wasteful American habit of purchasing bottled water by the boatloads. The park has installed several bottle refilling stations, where park visitors can fill reusable bottles with fresh spring water.
Americans use about 50 billion plastic bottles of water yearly,
167 for each person.
About 38 billion end up in landfills.
End-to-end they would circle the equator 217 times.
Making them uses around 20 million barrels of oil and creates more than 2.5 tons of CO2.
You can refill an average, reusable bottle with tap water once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days before it would cost as much as one quart of bottled water.