We want all you kids out there to always remember to drink a lot of water and stay hydrated. However, if you mainly drink your water out of plastic water bottles, we want you to stop sipping for a moment and think about WHY you do it.
Plastic water bottles are definitely convenient. You can buy them pretty much everywhere, in every convenience store, every shopping mall, every movie theatre and even out of vending machines across the country. But what about the environmental impact of all that plastic?
Plastic bottles are polluting the environment
Most folks drink their bottled water on the go and there is no convenient way to recycle the plastic bottles. In 2003, about 40 million bottles a day went into the trash or became litter. These billions of bottles take up valuable landfill space, leak toxic chemicals into the groundwater and take a whopping 1,000 years to biodegrade, if ever.
The high price of bottled water is not for the water but, in reality, to pay for the cost of the bottling, packaging, shipping, marketing, retailing and transporting it all over the globe. Next time you pick up a bottle of water, think about the distance the water in that bottle has traveled before it hits your lips.
BELIEVE IT: TAP WATER IS CLEANER THAN BOTTLED WATER
If you believe in the myth that the water that comes out of the tap in your kitchen sink isn’t as clean as water you buy from the store in a plastic bottle, YOU’RE 100% WRONG. In fact, tap water is highly regulated in terms of its cleanliness and safety by our governments; NO ONE REGULATES THE COMPANIES THAT PUT WATER INTO PLASTIC BOTTLES, possibly making it much less safe, clean and healthy than the water that comes from your kitchen sink.
Remember tap water is free!
Not to mention, tap water is pretty much free for the taking – a WHOLE LOT CHEAPER than the bottled kind.
Tap Into Alternatives
If you’re still not so keen on drinking water straight from the tap, there are other things you can do than buying water in plastic bottles. Why not ask your mom and dad to make a one-time purchase of a filter – either one for your sink that converts tap water into filtered water automatically or a Brita Water Filter, which is plastic jug with an attached filter on top that you fill with regular old tap water. The water drips through the filter and into the clear jug below and VOILA! Filtered “tap” water whenever you want it!
A Brita water filter will reduce the number of plastic bottles in your house
The other thing you (and every member of your family and all of your friends) should do is invest (one time) in a reusable, portable metal water container you can fill up at home and take with you whenever you go.
And if you do happen to buy a plastic bottle, just remember to recycle it!!!
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