February 4th, 2011

Frugal meet frivolous. But the players are not who you think. Those Washington lawmakers wielding the budget ax have revealed a frivolous underbelly.

And it’s caught the eye of a frugal watchdog group, whose supporters are pushing back at members of the House of Representatives for wasting money on bottled water.

As non-green habits go, bottled water has become a difficult one to defend. Once we Americans thought we needed this purportedly healthier water. Then we found out that most of the water being sold back to us often came from the public tap. It was a marketing, not a health, success. And the whole process was a big energy drain. Bottled water takes an environmental toll at every juncture — when the bottle is made, filled, shipped and then discarded to the landfill. And of all the many green changes we can make, this one is as easy as rediscovering your home’s tap water.

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