Brain Top Off!

You’ll find two main reasons to be concerned about Drinking Bottled Water: Your Well being and Your Environment.

Here are two of probably the most prevalent Wellness Considerations.

The bottled water industry is unregulated. Numerous of the companies that are bottling water are just using municipal sources. That is truly the great news within the US; the EPA standards governing municipal water are much much more strict than the FDA’s rules of bottled water. The regulations for disinfection, testing frequency, E. Coli, Coliform, Crytosporidium, and synthetic organic chemicals are either not in location, enforced, or needed in several instances. The only saving grace is that some of those firms in fact filter the municipal water ahead of bottling.

The other obvious and unconfirmed extent of danger from water bottled in plastic containers is PET – “polyethylene terephthalate”. The toxic chemical antimony is utilized to make containers produced of PET. The low-level cumulative effects of antimony include heart and lung damage and is also linked to health difficulties using the eyes, skin, respiratory program, and also the cardiovascular program. This toxic chemical leaches into the water which is contained by the plastic bottle. The longer it can be in that container the higher the leaching or possible for leaching. Also what exaggerates and accelerates the leaching process is the “heating” of the plastic by becoming left in direct sunlight, in a hot, enclosed vehicle in hot weather, and also by microwaving.

The Environment.

The damage and danger of water from plastic containers comes in two parts: the amount of petroleum that’s utilized to generate the plastic containers and disposal and degradation of the containers soon after use.

The manufacture of plastic bottles to meet the demand for the bottling of water needs about 17.6 million barrels of oil each year, which does not consist of transportation costs. Which is roughly the same quantity of oil that’s utilised to fuel a lot more than one million vehicles within the U.S. every year. The globe over, bottling water makes use of about 2.7 million tons of plastic annually.

The disposal of plastic is almost a misnomer: plastic doesn’t really degrade completely. It disintegrates in to smaller and smaller pieces. The sheer volume of plastic containers that are discarded every hour is counted inside the millions in the US alone. A lot more and a lot more documentation has surfaced about huge masses of plastic debris floating inside the oceans as far from land as one could possibly get. This plastic is getting consumed by numerous of the sea birds and marine wildlife. Thousands of birds are found dead with huge plastic objects that they’ve ingested nonetheless present in their dead carcasses. Minute fragments of plastic are getting eaten by ocean fishes, that are then harvested by the fishing market for human consumption.

In Conclusion.

The market of bottled water has been conjured up by big corporations to fuel their profits. The health risks to our planet and towards the wellness of humans and animals far out-weigh any real or perceived need for water to be placed in a container that leaches carcinogenic chemicals after which becomes a pollutant that creates fatal consequences for the ecosystems of the earth. Far higher alternatives and decisions can and need to be created.

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On Thursday, which was World Water Day, a short film called The Story of Bottled Water by Anne Leonard was released. In The story of Bottled Water, Leonard shows how corporations have convinced Americans to spend extra cash on half a billion bottles of water every week though most people in this country can get it for free. What has evolved into a $ 5 billion-a-year industry in the U.S. is the “Purified” bottled water, and ironically it poses a threat to public health and the environment.

World Water Day

According to an article on HuffingtonPost.com, Anne Leonard said she chose World Water Day to release The Story of Bottled Water because it is:

“a good day to pause and consider the insanity of a global economy where 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water while other people spend billions on a bottled product that’s no cleaner, harms people and the environment and costs up to 2,000 times the price of tap water.”

Leonard, in The Story of Bottled Water, compares spending money on bottle water to buying a shrink-wrapped sandwich made by unknown hands costing $ 10,000. She puts the blame on multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns paid for by industrial giants like Pepsi and Coca Cola and Nestle to get Americans to develop fears toward drinking tap water.

Bottled water contains toxic chemicals

While people may think they are drinking purified water, The Story of Bottled Water points out that it is often times no safer than the water coming from the tap. It also could be less safe. Toxic chemicals from the plastic in the bottle can leach into the water inside.

A report on mindfully.org states that Water bottles are made from various plastics, including Bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical that leaches into the water in the bottles to some degree. Bisphenal-A, as it turns out, is a hormone disruptor that imitates estrogen and can help cause early onset puberty, declining sperm counts, obesity along with breast and prostate cancer. In March 2007 a billion-dollar class action suit was filed in Los Angeles against five leading manufacturers of baby bottles containing Bisphenal-A.

Filter water at home

Leonard says that bottled water costs up to 2,000 times more than tap water, yet up to 40 percent of bottled water is simply filtered tap water. Consumers can filter their own water at home using products costing anywhere from $ 15 to $ 120. The Story of Bottled Water underlines many other facts about bottled water, many of which Leonard calls “inconvenient” truth:

• Bottled water is subject to fewer health regulations than tap water.
• Municipalities often need money loans to cover more than the $70 million it costs to landfill water bottles alone each year, according to Corporate Accountability International.
• Making the plastic water bottles used in the U.S. takes enough oil and energy to fuel a million cars, not including the fuel required to transport the bottles from the factory.

Use metal to bottle water

The Story of Bottled Water, however, does see a bright side to its argument.

Leonard says that fewer people spend money now on bottled water – sales fell slightly in 2009 for the first time ever. More consumers choose to filter water at home, pass on bottled water at the store and carry reusable metal water bottles. Aluminum and steel water bottles cost anywhere between $ 5.95 and $ 19.95. Certainly beats a $ 10,000 sandwich.

Are you aware of Soda Club’s legal battle in Germany? It could have far-reaching consequences in the bottled-water market.

In 2006, by claiming that Soda Club bottles were company property, not the customer’s (per standard customer contracts), Sodastream tried to stop a competing enterprise from refilling said bottles of carbon dioxide (CO2).

This failed in Germany, and now could very well do the same in most countries.

Competition is needed in this market niche, both for environ­mental reasons (bottles should be refilled in the store, an operation that takes a mere 20 seconds); and for financial reasons (price could easily be halved). More info about refilling – and home refilling – of carbon dioxide bottles for home sodamakers here.

Consumers should consider that sparkling water made at home can already be had at a fraction of the cost of retail carbonated beverages; however, things could be a lot better.

Here are the facts from bundeskartellamt in Germany:

http://www.bundeskartellamt.de/wEnglisch/News/Archiv/ArchivNews2006/2006_04_13.php

April 13, 2006

Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court confirms immediate enforceability in the Soda-Club case

Soda-Club GmbH, Wiesbaden (“Soda-Club“) may not use its dominant position abusively. Soda-Club had prevented competing suppliers from refilling CO2 cartridges for water carbonating machines by claiming its ownership of the cartridges.

In February 2006 the Bundeskartellamt prohibited this conduct. Soda Club opposed the Bundeskartellamt’s immediately enforceable decision by applying to the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court for interim measures. In provisional proceedings the court has now confirmed the Bundeskartellamt’s decision in all material respects. Soda-Club is dominant in the market for refilling CO2 cartridges. Hindering competitors from refilling CO2 cartridges represents an abuse of this dominant position. By this conduct Soda-Club prevents consumers from taking advantage of alternative refilling possibilities. Only the obligation to point out on labels on the company’s own cartridges that it is admissible to have them refilled by competitors was seen by the Higher Regional Court as a disproportionate measure.

Although Soda-Club can still appeal against the Higher Regional Court’s decision to the Federal Supreme Court, the Higher Regional Court’s decision implies that the numerous small and medium-sized bottling plants can now start to compete with Soda-Club and refill all cartridges circulating in the market.