The Story Of Bottled Water Encourages Filtering Water At Home

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 additional money on half a billion bottles of water each week though most individuals in this country can get it for free. "Purified" bottled water has become a $ 5 billion-a-year industry within the U.S. and ironically threatens public health and also the environment.

World Water Day 2010

Anne Leonard said in an article on HuffingtonPost.com that she chose World Water Day to release The Story of Bottled Water because World Water Day 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."

The illustration used within the Story of Bottled Water is a comparison between spending money on bottled water and a shrink-wrapped sandwich made by unknown hands costing $ 10,000. She blames multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns commissioned by industrial giants like Coca Cola and Pepsi and Nestle to make Americans afraid to drink tap water.

Bottled water contains toxic chemicals

When people might think they're 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 could also be less safe. What can leach into the water inside are the toxic chemicals from the plastic within the bottle.

According to a report on mindfully.org, water bottles are made from various plastics, including a chemical that leaches to the water in the bottles to some degree, the Bisphenol-A (BPA). 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. Five leading manufacturers of baby bottles containing Bisphenal-A were slapped with a billion-dollar class action suit in March 2007.

Filtered water at home

Leonard reveals that bottled water costs up to 2,000 times more than tap water, yet nearly 50 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 lists many other facts about bottled water that Leonard calls "inconvenient truths:

• 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.

To bottle water use metal

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

Leonard states that fewer individuals are spending cash now on bottled water - sales are showing a slight decline for the very first time ever in 2009. A lot more individuals are using reusable metal water bottles, passing on bottled water at the store and filtering their own water at home. Aluminum and steel water bottles cost anywhere between $ 5.95 and $ 19.95. Certainly beats a $ 10,000 sandwich.