Thursday, February 14, 2008
Bottled water is the drink of choice for many University of Kansas students, whose purchase of 437,000 bottles of water last year constituted almost a third of all campus beverage sales, said David Mucci, director of Kansas Memorial Unions.
Photo illustration.
Bottled water has also become a favorite among Americans, who buy 28 billion bottles each year, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation.
Though, amid surging sales, many environmentalists have questioned the logic of bottled water consumption.
Research shows that bottled water offers no significant health benefit that tap water doesn’t offer.
Despite this, consumers pay extra to drink water shipped from exotic locations such as Fiji and France.
The plastic bottles, once discarded, accumulate in city landfills and leach chemicals into the environment.
Health Benefits
Students on campus pay $1.25 for a 20-ounce bottle of Dasani. That translates to $8 per gallon – more than twice as expensive as a gallon of gas. For this hefty price, the bottled water is likely to be just as clean as the municipal tap water Lawrence gets from the Kansas River and Clinton Reservoir.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, federal standards for bottled water are almost identical to those for tap water. As a result, neither one is significantly cleaner than the other.
Though the FDA monitors lead in bottled water more closely than the Environmental Protection Agency monitors tap water, that potential benefit is offset by the presence of fluoride in city water.
Fluoride, which improves dental health, gets filtered out of bottled water.
The Natural Resources Defense Council also estimates that 25 percent of all bottled water, including Aquafina and Dasani, is municipal water taken directly from a tap and purified again.
Water Miles
Even though Americans can get clean, cheap water from their kitchen faucet, the Earth Policy Institute estimates that a quarter of bottled water bought by consumers is shipped across national borders.
Jeff Severin, director of the KU Center for Sustainability, said the “water miles” accumulated during the distribution of bottled water from places such as Fiji or France was a big concern.
“We’re bottling water far away from where it’s purchased, shipping it all over the world and in the process using fossil fuels,” he said.
Petroleum is used not only to ship water, but to manufacture the bottles as well.
The production of the 28 billion bottles of water Americans buy each year uses 1.1 million barrels of oil and releases one billion pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to the Container Recycling Institute.
Plastic Pollution
Of the billions of water bottles Americans buy each year, 80 percent end up in landfills or incinerators, even after getting recycled.
Those bottles could take anywhere between 400 and 1,000 years to degrade, the EPI estimates.
Simran Sethi, environmental journalist and Lacy C. Haynes visiting professor in the School of Journalism, said that plastic didn’t biodegrade like many other materials in landfills, it photodegrades, or breaks down from exposure to light and heat.
Chemicals from photodegraded plastic bottles can leach into the water during storage, Sethi said.
“If you’re tasting plastic in your water, you’re ingesting plastic,” she said.
Chemical leaching into bottled water increases the longer a person reuses a plastic bottle. For this reason, Sethi said it was best to avoid plastic altogether.
Beyond the Bottle
Severin said one of the best ways to stay hydrated without bottled water was to buy a reusable stainless steel or aluminum bottle and fill it with tap water.
“You can get the same convenience with a reusable bottle and not be contributing to environmental problems and health concerns,” he said.
Severin also said students could invest in a good water filtration system, such as a water jug or faucet filter if they were worried about contaminants in city water.
At $8 a gallon, bottled water on campus is significantly more expensive than the 24-packs available at grocery stores like HyVee. This water costs about $1.38 per gallon. But those value packs, despite being cheap, still contribute to the negative environmental effects of plastic bottles.
But Sethi said she thought this may change.
Cities such as San Francisco and Ann Arbor, Mich., have already acted on the problem by banning bottled water in city buildings.
Bans like these have made her optimistic that a change will come, if only one bottle at a time.
—Edited by Nick Mangiaracina
Best of the worst: bottled versus tap
Better options for bad (health) situations.
Letter to the Editor: Bottled water safe ...
Bottled water company cares about the safety and environmental impact of its ...
Faculty members get environmental task force positions
Faculty members Simran Sethi and Jeff Severin were chosen by Climate Protection ...
Dirty mouth: Water may not be clean
Traces of prescription medicines and over-the-counter drugs can be found in water ...
Where your waste goes after it’s disposed
Follow the process your trash and recyclables go through after they’re tossed ...
Green it!: Little changes for big change
Change your shopping routine
New baler will take load off KU ...
Bottles, bottles everywhere
A nationwide tour raises awareness about the environmental issues of plastic water ...
It's easy being green
KU Hillel members created a documentary to observe other students' reactions to ...
How to take out your e-trash
Get rid of those electronics in an eco-happy manner
Rain garden by recreation center to prevent ...
Native flowers and grasses will allow the $40,000 garden to manage the ...
Handshy: Plastic is bad for our environment ...
Documentary reveals new consequence for using plastic.
Kansan Departments
Your guide to surviving the week.
Waterworld
Water covers about 70 percent of the earth’s surface. That should keep ...
What Do You Know About... Water Fluoridation?
Poisoning the well?
Center seeks student input on sustainability plan
As a part of Campus Sustainability Week, there will be four brainstorming ...
'Get Off the (H20) Bottle' proves successful
The initiative gave away more than 130 Klean Kanteens at event yesterday.
Environmentalist shares her passion with Lawrence
Simran Sethi has a long list of experiences: a host for MTV, ...
Campus groups promote recycling, reducing
The Center for Sustainability will be giving away reusable bottles and bags ...
Chi Omega bottle sculpture has a message
Used plastic changes fountain into an artistic reminder of sustainability in the ...
Fired up about coal
Lawrence’s coal-fired plant contributes to high asthma rates, river pollution.
KU receives C+ in sustainability efforts
Sustainable Endowments Institute evaluated the 332 colleges on their green efforts.
Tomorrow's news: The watermill: making water from ...
Green living good for earth and wallet
Students use sustainability to keep bills low.
From the farm to your plate
‘Food miles,’ pesticides and water affect how ‘green’ your food is.
Hydraulic fracturing a hot topic at energy ...
Energy-industry professionals and University students come together to discuss hydraulic fracturing, a ...
Sales of the death men
America's funeral homes will see 2.5 million people pass through their doors ...
Student groups team up for environment
From Blue to Green, a sustainability movement, will host events between now ...
Students promote campus sustainability
During Campus Sustainability Day Wednesday, students talked about ways to reserve resources ...
KU Environs to lead an Earth Day ...
Eco-friendly festivities will aim to increase knowledge of sustainability and its benefits.
BYOB: Bring Your Own Bag
For more than just sack lunches
Student recognized for green chemistry
Madhav Ghant won an award for his research of environmentally friendly ways ...
English: How I finally transitioned to reusable ...
Living the green life
Earth Day is just one day of 365 that this senior is ...
Survival Skills: Eating Healthy on a Budget
Tips for healthy eating alternatives while still saving money.
Putting words into sustainable action
Associate Professor Simran Sethi is working on creating an eco-friendly home and ...
Housepets in a pot
The best greenery those with a not-so-green thumb
From left: Kimberlee Hinkle, Libby Johnson and Hannah ...
1 comment
Kansas Jayhawk fans hold aloft a reproduction of ...
2 comments
Erin Saupe, a Ph.D. student from St. Cloud, ...
1 comment
0 comments
Armed robbers continue to threaten.
3 comments
Lecture from Greg Mortenson, co-author of New York ...
0 comments
Comments
The real cost of bottled water
More people would shun bottled water if municipalities didn't add fluoride chemicals in the first place.
Fluoride is neither a nutrient nor essential for healthy teeth.
Fluoride puts tap water drinkers at risk of kidney, thryoid, bone and tooth damage.
While most sodas are fluoridated because municipal tap water is used to make them, the bottled water sold by coke and pepsi contain no fluoride because the fluoride is filtered out.
People who drink fluoridated soda have loads of tooth decay.
Drinking fluoride serves no useful purpose for people who have poor diets. People who have good diets don't need fluoride.
for more info: fluoridation 101 http://www.orgsites.com/ny/nyscof
http://www.FluorideAction.Net
The real cost of bottled water
I agree with most of the fluoride argument. But to use tooth decay from soda as an example. Seriously, what of the sugar content, or that feeling on your teeth after a Coke. Don't use that one again, it's just ridiculous.
The real cost of bottled water
From the CDC: "Chlorine gas is irritating and corrosive to the throat and lungs, eyes, and skin. The severity of health problems depends on how much chlorine your pet is exposed to and for how long. Exposure to low levels of chlorine gas can cause coughing and eye and skin irritation. Exposure to higher levels can cause a burning feeling of the eyes and skin, rapid breathing, wheezing, blue coloring of the skin, fluid in the lungs, and pain in the chest. Exposure to much higher levels can produce severe eye and skin burns, respiratory failure, and death."
Numerous scientific studies report that chlorinated tap water is a skin irritant and can be associated with rashes like eczema.Most people never give the dangers of chlorine a thought. After all, our elected public officials keep assuring us that chlorinated city tap water is completely safe for human consumption. Numerous scientific studies report that chlorinated tap water is a skin irritant and can be associated with rashes like eczema. "Chlorinated water contains chemical compounds called trihalomethanes which are carcinogens resulting from the combination of chlorine with compounds in water. These chemicals, also known as organochlorides, do not degrade very well and are generally stored in the fatty tissues of the body (breast, other fatty areas, mother's milk, blood and semen). Organochlorides can cause mutations by altering DNA, suppress immune system function and interfere with the natural controls of cell growth. Chlorine has been documented to aggravate asthma. Several studies also link chlorine and chlorinated by-products to a greater incidence of bladder, breast and bowel cancer as well as malignant melanoma. One study even links the use of chlorinated tap water to congenital cardiac anomalies. Anything you can do to filter tap and shower water that eliminates or minimizes chlorine would certainly be helpful and possibly curative for some immune system problems."
Joseph M. Price, MD - "Chlorine is the greatest crippler and killer of modern times. It is an insidious poison."
Albert Schatz, Ph.D - "Fluoridation is the greatest fraud that has ever been perpetrated and it has been perpetrated on more people than any other fraud has." Professor Albert Schatz, Ph.D. (Microbiology), Discoverer of streptomycin and Nobel Prize Winner
The real cost of bottled water
All of the problems discussed above would be eliminated with a good water filter. A good carbon based filtration system will take out the fluoride the city adds to your water, all your chlorine, lead, synthetic chemicals, etc. Not to mention how much cheaper it is than bottled water and better for the environment. Here's a site that lists different water filters and rates their performance. www.WaterFilterComparisons.com>-
- Posted by healthnut71 on February 15, 2008 at 10:21 a.m.
- permalink
- suggest removal
The real cost of bottled water
That's right. I think, it would be helpful if we will use a water filter. That's why I'm certain that the water we are drinking/using is clean and safe enough. We bought ours from http://waterfilters.mercola.com/drinking-water-filter.aspx You may wanna try it.
Sign in to comment
Or login with:
OpenID