Joe Salvatore, Grade 10
Ms. Funderburk, Dean / Archbishop Williams H.S., Braintree
"Stop! Think Before You Drink"
Think before you drink! Turn to your tap instead of twisting off that cap.
We see it every where we go, society's obsession with bottled water. We see commercials showing beautiful water in babbling brooks, beautiful waterfalls in places so picturesque that we can only imagine them. Water so pure and clean it has to be delicious, cool and thirst quenching.
We see the advertisements with athletes holding bottled water suggesting it will make us fit. We know it is expensive. Perhaps up to 2000 times the price of municipal water. It's a multi-billion dollar business! Does that make it a luxury item?
We see the weight-watching adults always with a bottled water in hand, suggesting that it might make us thin. The old quote for the dieter regarding food is, "A moment on the lips is a lifetime on the hips."
Perhaps the new slogan for bottled water should be, "A moment on the lips, a thousand years in the land fill".
The impact of plastic waste is only a fraction of what we need to know about the bottled water we are drinking.
Water is life. Plain and simple, without water there could be no life. We see it every where we live. It covers most of our planet Earth. We use it to drink, we use it to cook, we use it to clean, bathe and shower and it flows down our drains and toilets and out of our homes back to the Earth.
It is something we often take for granted. We don't think about where it's coming from, but we should.
We need water, but do we really need bottled water or has it become an obsession with us? Is it really that good for us and our planet? We need to become educated consumers of tap water.
We hear people every day complaining about the price of gasoline but if we opened those little bottles of water and filled a gallon jug we would realize we are actually paying more per gallon for that bottle of water that we are drinking. Is anyone complaining about that? We are paying a lot more for something that we could get for a fraction of the price by simply turning to our tap.
The truth is, the total amount of energy that is used to fill that beautiful little plastic bottle of water, transport it to where it needs to go, refrigerate it and then dispose of the empty plastic bottle could be the same amount of money and energy that would be used to fill a one liter bottle one quarter full of oil! What an expense. What a waste!
The bottled water companies know that we are fearful of polluted water supplies and they use our lack of safe water education to their advantage. What they don't tell us is there is no guarantee that the water in that bottle is any better tasting, any purer, any more regulated, protected or safer than what is flowing right out of the taps in our own homes. In fact it may have come from a municipal water supply itself instead of the beautiful spring pictured on the bottle and the bottlers don't have to tell us.
We may hear that bottled water is color free, calorie free, caffeine free and sugar free, but what we need to know is just what we are getting for "free" in those little bottles of water. Random tests of bottled water have found carcinogens, bacteria, mold, benzene, coliform, microbes and chemicals.
Chemicals like phthalates have been detected in bottled water. It is the chemical used to soften the plastic of the bottle so we can enjoy it more. What will be the lasting effects of all this exposure to our bodies and our environment? The more we learn about bottled water the harder it seems to swallow.
Is that bottle of water safer, healthier, or more pure? There is no guarantee. The only guarantee the bottled water companies can make is that their water will cost us a lot more money then what we get from the tap.
Is our tap water safe? Yes it is. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is responsible for monitoring our tap water. Here in Massachusetts we know that our tap water is being treated, tested and safely delivered right to our tap. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) and our local water departments test up to 500 water samples a week. They also check for over 120 different kinds of contaminants each year. They are watching over our tap water for us.
The FDA (Federal Drug Administration) watches over the bottling of water. The problem is: if the water is bottled in the same state as where we are buying, it the FDA doesn't have to be involved at all. The FDA does random inspections of the bottling plants but are they thorough enough and do they inspect often enough to keep us safe? Who is protecting us? The EPA, along with state and local governments, has a lot more people spending a lot more time watching our water supply.
We know that yes, some bottled waters are regulated but, we can rest assured that when we turn on our tap all the water that flows is being regulated. We can go one step further to assure ourselves that our water is the best and our environment is safe by installing an in home water purification system.
Stop! Think before you drink! Is the convenience of that bottled water today, the instant gratification you receive when you twist off the cap, worth more than what we will leave behind for the Earth's future? Has our laziness replaced our common sense?
Some people hold their bottled water like it's a status symbol. The truth is it's the symbol of an uneducated consumer. With each sip we are contributing to the 25.5 billion plastic water bottles being sold each year. The bottling plants use more than 17 million barrels of oil used to make those plastic bottles. For our convenience the bottled water is delivered to local stores requiring more fuel to transport the bottled water. The bottling plants produce 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide producing the water. All of this is being done for our "convenience" and at an outrageous cost to both our pocketbooks and to our environment.
We can replace what we lose from our pocketbooks but once we ruin our environment it is gone forever. How wasteful are those little bottles of water? Before you twist off the next cap research what that bottle means. Did you know it takes three liters of water to make one liter of bottled water? Does that make sense to you? It doesn't!
Educate yourself. Protect yourself. Protect our Earth. Skip the bottles and use the tap. Drink up! It's safe!
I believe a good place to publish this article would be in the Sunday Newspaper. People would have time to read it, think about facts contained in it, and hopefully remember the article when they do their weekly grocery shopping.
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Sources
- The Christian Science Monitor "Money Drain for City Hall," pg. 2
- The Christian Science Monitor "Water as a Social Justice Cause," pg. 3 The Reader's Digest "The
- Environment-Rethink What You Drink," pg 1-3 MWRA "Annual Drinking Water Test Results for 2006", pg. I
- The Christian Science Monitor "Water as a Social Justice Cause," pg2 http://www.csmomtor.com/2UUIS/U 11 lip I )SUj-sten.ntmr!page~
Bibliography
- The Christian Science Monitor "Water as a Social Justice Cause," pg.2-3 http://www.csmonitor.coml2008/0117/015s03-sten.html?oage=3
- The Reader's Digest "The Environment-Rethink What You Drink." pg.3 http://www.rd.comlspecial-reports/the-environmentlrethink-what -vou-drinklarticle.html
- MWRA-"Annual Drinking Water Test Results for 2006", pg. 1 http://www.mwra.state.ma.us/annual/waterreport/2006results/2006results.htm
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