The New York Public Interest Research Group and the Green Campus Initiative have started a Take Back The Tap campaign, highlighting the horrors and environmental destruction for which bottled water is responsible.

American bottled water consumption used the energy equivalent of 32 million to 54 million barrels of oil in 2007 — enough gasoline to run about 1.5 million cars in the United States over the course of the year. America has one of the best public water systems in the world. Our water systems are actually more heavily regulated and therefore essentially safer then bottled water.

Independent testing of bottled water has found chemicals ranging from fertilizers to industrial chemicals such as phthalates, which are hormone disrupters.

Along with hazards to our health, the main problem with bottled water is the environmental damages that water bottles cause by creating patches of garbage in the oceans and causing certain death to fish and birds whose main diet component is now plastic. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a 3.5 million square kilometer area in the North Pacific — twice the size of Alaska — that contains more than 20,000 bits of floating plastic per square kilometer.

A simple breakdown for the penny-savvy consumer shows that tap water ranges from $0.002 to $0.003 per gallon, compared to up to $7 per gallon for bottled water (purchased in single-serving 16- or 23-ounce bottles).

Join the Back To The Tap-Syracuse University Facebook group, showing your commitment to eliminating bottled water from your life. The easiest task, which literally takes a second, is to post your Facebook status to say that you will no longer be drinking bottled water because it’s foolish to your wallet and to the environment.

Drinking bottled water shows you’re supporting ecological destruction by filling up landfills with nonbiodegradable bottles, damaging our marine life habitat by filling the stomachs of fish and birds, and polluting oceanic surface.

Ted Traver 

Project Coordinator, NYPIRG, SU and State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry Chapter 

Shaylyn Decker 

President, Green Campus Initiative

 

Published on April 16, 2011 at 12:00 pm