involvement.und.edu/organization/totb
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Why Think Outside The Bottle? Only a few decades ago (ask your parents or even older siblings!), it was normal for people to drink water straight from the tap. After all, America has one of the cleanest public water sources in the world. Then one day, Coke, Pepsi, Nestle, and other corporations launched an awesome marketing strategy, and amazingly enough, managed to convince everyone that tap water was unsafe and that bottled water was "safer" and "healthier". Now days, they make a huge profit by taking water from the tap, putting it into a plastic bottle (accompanied by a picture of a pristine snow cap mountain top), and then reselling it to consumers at 1000-4000 times the price. In the process, we have grown to fear our perfectly fine public water source. Lots of oil is used for manufacturing and transporting bottled water, which at the end of its quick one-use life cycle contributes to a giant landfill. THE SCAM FACTS:
1) 40% of bottled water comes from the same source as tap water including major companies such as Dasani and Aquafina.
2) Tap water is delivered to homes and offices for $0.002/gal. Bottled water, which can cost as much per gallon as gasoline, is a 1000 times more expensive. THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT:
1) During the life time of the plastic bottle, enough oil is consumed to to fill up 1/4 of the bottle
2) Only 1 out of every 5 plastic bottle is recycled (80% goes into the trash)
3) Yet, 1 out of every 5 Americans drink nothing but bottled water
4) Manufacturing the 30+ billion water bottles bought per year uses 3 times the amount of water in the bottle and 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. (Tap water is regulated by the EPA, meaning it has to be tested regularly; bottled water is regulated by the FDA, meaning the companies test at their convenience)
2) Labels can be deceptive. One bottled water company put images of mountains and lakes on their bottle when in actuality, the water came from a well in an industrial facilities parking lot.
3) Studies have shown that PET plastic, used for water bottles, may be a carcinogen or leach hormone-disrupting chemicals. SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES:
1) The cost of just one case of bottled water could supply a person in Kenya with clean, safe drinking water for the next 5 years!
2) The United Nations estimates that if given just 1/6th of the money spent on bottled water each year, $15 billion, they could cut in half the number of people without access to clean water.
3) Right now over one billion people –1 out of every 6 of us on this planet—do not have access to clean drinking water. By 2025, it will increase to 2 out of every 3 people.
4) There is no substitute for public water. Water is a human right, not a privilege. By supporting and buying bottled water, we are simultaneously supporting the removal and transference of gallons and gallons of water from developing countries around the world
[The above is all from Think Outside the Bottle at Yale: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Think-Outside-the-Bottle-at-Yale/170469363448?sk=info]
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TOP 10 REASONS TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOTTLE! http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/top-ten-reasons-think-outside-bottle
TAKE THE PLEDGE! OPT FOR TAP WATER OVER BOTTLED WATER! http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2215/t/8100/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1410
WATCH THE "THE STORY OF BOTTLED WATER" SHORT FILM! http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/story-of-bottled-water?r=TOTB
