Brain Top Off!

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.