I’ve always had a guilty conscience when I buy and toss a plastic bottle of water, but it just got worse. Beverage Digest reported that U.S. consumers spent $16.8 billion on water in 2007. The report also stated that 60 million plastic bottles a day are sent to landfills, where they will sit decomposing for the next 1,000 years. This is awful news, and I have to ask myself why, when we live in the U.S., do we think we have to buy a bottle of water? We live in the cleanest country in the world, where our tap water is tested and reported every single day.
Local government in several major cities are discouraging the use of bottled water by employees in an attempt to reduce or eliminate the amount of plastic bottle waste. These proactive cities include: Albuquerque, Boston, Los Angeles, Louisville, Minneapolis, New York City, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle ad St. Louis.
I want to encourage everybody to take the money they would spend on 5 bottles of water and go purchase one of the latest and greatest water bottles in safe, re-usable plastic or aluminum. My new favorite is the Camelback PBA Free Better Bottle.