U. S. consumers drink over 8 billion gallons of bottled water per year, over spending over $11 billion ($1.38 per gallon). The Earth Policy Institute estimates that making bottles to meet our demand for bottled water requires more than 17 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel more than 1 million U.S. cars for a year. Adding in the Pacific Institute’s estimates for the energy used for pumping and processing, transportation, and refrigeration, brings the annual fossil fuel footprint of bottled water consumption in the United States to over 50 million barrels of oil equivalent—enough to run 3 million cars for one year.

After the water has been consumed, the plastic bottle must be disposed of. According to the Container Recycling Institute , 86 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or litter. Buried water bottles can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade. Almost 40 percent of the PET bottles that were deposited for recycling in the United States in 2004 were actually exported, sometimes to as far away as China—adding to the resources used by this product.

A way to visualize this waste of our resources is to take a water bottle and fill it 1/4 full of oil. Yikes!

What to do? One option is to drink tap water in reusable, long-life plastic bottles such as Nalgene or HDPE, or the increasingly popular stainless steel bottles. Many people, however, are not confident in the quality of their tap water, and many are turned off to the taste and odor of chlorine. For these people, purchasing an in-home water filter makes sense. Operating costs are usually under $0.10 per gallon - far cheaper than what they are paying at the store!

Carrying a refillable bottle will make a statement that you care about our planet!