<img attachment="bottles_of_water.jpg" class="frame" align="left">The article, <a href="http://baltimorechronicle.com/2006/020906EPI.shtml" source="Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel">Bottled Water: Pouring Resources Down the Drain</a> documents the rising fortunes of bottled water. Again and again, studies have pointed out that the water in these bottles is either no different from or actually inferior to the water coming from your faucet (<iq>roughly 40 percent of bottled water begins as tap water</iq>). Even several years ago, a large city like New York had healthier tap water in most places than the average bottle of water. In many countries, drinking tap water in restaurants is actively frowned upon---it's bottled or nothing. Bottled water has the natural advantage that it is portable and can be bought in a packaged quantity when needed. However, at <iq>up to $2.50 per liter ($10 per gallon), bottled water costs more than gasoline in the United States.</iq> <i>About 5 times as much</i>, as gasoline costs around $2 per gallon. The report maintains that people spend over $100 Billion every year on bottled water. As it stands, member nations of the UN spend <iq>$15 billion ... every year on water supply and sanitation.</iq> In order <iq>to halve the proportion of people who lack reliable and lasting access to safe drinking water by the year 2015</iq>, the UN predicts it would need to double that investment (to $30 Billion). This issue alone starkly illustrates just how divided the planet is. On the one side are members of a sizable elite who purchase water at exhorbitant prices, often shipped from far away---sometimes as much as 9,000 kilometers---and despite extraordinarily cheap water available in nearly infinite quantities. On the other is a portion of the world---an estimated <iq>1.1 billion people</iq>---with almost no access to water at all. Bottled water also doesn't get in there for free. Not only do people pay a lot for it---though they could drink freely available tap water and put that cash towards a good cause (see above)---it costs a lot more to produce it. Tap water comes to consumers through an extremely efficient distribution mechanism; bottled water <iq>must be transported long distances---and nearly one-fourth of it across national borders---by boat, train, airplane, and truck.</iq> This wastes precious fossil fuels and pollutes the environment, all for no concrete improvement in quality of life. The plastic bottles also don't come from nowhere, requiring crude oil both for materials and production processes. <iq>Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.</iq> All of that plastic must be recycled or dumped. It bio-degrades only slowly (taking about 1000 years) and <iq>86 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or litter.</iq> Even if the bottles are submitted for recycling, they are often transported further distances (sometimes as far as from the US to China) for processing, using even more fuel. Drinking bottled water is clearly one of the more wasteful things a person can do. And it's not just the US here. It seems any countries with pretensions to ascension into the circle of elites (or those already there) is quaffing in ever-greater quantities. <bq>Americans drank 26 billion liters of bottled water in 2004 ... [with] Mexico ... at 18 billion liters ... Italians drank the most bottled water per person, at nearly 184 liters ... Mexico and the United Arab Emirates consumed 169 and 164 liters per person. Belgium and France [drank] ... almost 145 liters annually ... India swigged three times as much bottled water in 2004 as it did in 1999 and China, more than twice as much.</bq> The practice of wasting to show wealth is still very much with us, all encouraged by companies eager to profit from this foolishness. In our capitalist world, it is considered commendable to make a profit this way. Wouldn't it be great if we spent this money on helping those who don't have any water at all? In one fell swoop, we could reduce usage of fossil fuels, reduce the amount of non-biodegradable garbage produced and not affect our lifestyles or health at all. Merchants, who are only too happy to sell something they get for nearly free, would lose an income stream, but the money saved could be used to help the rest of the world that has no water at all.