Feeling guilty about your bottled water? Or worried that it is not as pure as the pastoral scene on the label implies? Your worries are justified. Bottled water is unregulated in the US, and often as not, it is just filtered tap water – with a heavier carbon footprint thanks to the requisite plastic container and the shipping.

Luckily, just as you’re re-evaluating this resource-intensive habit, so is everyone else, from the cities that have passed bottled water taxes (hello Chicago) to the bottled water companies themselves, to entrepreneurs trying to figure a better way.

Culligan, the big kahuna of bottled water service companies now makes a cooler that hooks up to your tap – an apparent concession that the days of carting around those big blue bottles are numbered.

But one of the most unique solutions to filling your cup without filling the landfill may be generating your own purified water. You can do that by tapping into the humidity in the air with an Atmospheric Water Generator, which pulls water from “thin air,” as long as that air registers at least 35 percent humidity.

We tested such a water generator, called the Ecoloblue 28 (see photo, right). At first, it was hard to believe that this water was just materializing in our kitchen. It tasted fresh, crisp and cool, outperforming the stuff that came through our refrigerator’s charcoal filter.

We just loved that we were generating our own water, like being off-grid with the electricity. Not being dependent on the tap, we had no worries about fluctuations in the local water supply and the additives you can’t turn down, like the fluoride and chlorine in so many city systems. Nor did we have to worry that our water contained traces of medications, like those found in tap water tested during an AP investigation last year. Tap water, for the record, is still considered basically safe, but it varies, by city, region and within time frames. Same for bottled water; it varies by label but largely comes from tap water, and can be contaminated too as tests by the Environmental Working Group found. Or it might be pure as the snow — in the Alps; so add a jet ride to its carbon footprint.

The Natural Resources Defense Council’s report, Tap Water Quality and Safety, endorses tap water, but with caveats for pregnant women and older people and people with special conditions. Makes you wonder.

But we wanted to know more about the Ecoloblue water, and what it did or did not contain. Is pulling water from air a perfectly pure proposition? Our home water tests showed that the water generated was free of chlorine, nitrates/nitrates, sediment, suggesting that the machine’s multiple filter system was doing its job. At one point, there was a buildup in the intake area, the result of one filter that hadn’t been prepared properly at the factory. That problem has since been fixed. New tech sometimes needs tweaking. (For more on our personal take on using the Ecoloblue machine, see Ecoloblue: Our Home Test.)

HOW IT WORKS

So how do these AWGs produce water? It’s simple de-humidification, followed by complex filtration. The reason the water generated tasted so pure — and professional tests show that it meets or beats water compliance standards  in several countries — is no mystery. After the machine condenses the water from the air, it runs it through a sophisticated system of three carbon filters, one reverse-osmosis filter and three UV lights to kill or trap any germs, dust, pollen or air pollutants that might float in or build up in the storage tanks.

“The object is to make sure everybody can use the water regardless of the environment they’re living in,” says Ecoloblue CEO Henri-James Tieleman. So if you have cat dander floating around, or Uncle Joe is standing nearby with a cigar or you happen to live in a high air pollution area, the Ecoloblue will be impervious. Even in Shanghai, where the machine was deliberately tested outdoors, it produced pure water, according to one of several water tests the company has commissioned in the US, China, Australia and the UK.

“We are complying even with polluted air in Shanghai, what else (other proof) do we need to get?” asks Tieleman.

But are four filters and three UV lights, and all that, really necessary?

“Do you like the water you’re drinking?” asks Tieleman, a native of The Netherlands and apparent master of the non-rhetorical question. “I would say this is why you like it, because it went through all this process” in which the filters, lights and collection uptake are engineered, timed and strategically placed to work together.

The move away from bottled water has become a strong undertow in America, and now one of the leaders in packaged water, albeit large packages, is making a play for customers who want purified water – but without all the plastic.

Culligan is introducing a line of bottle-less water coolers that are designed to serve homes or small businesses. The new “point-of-service” water coolers rely on the building’s existing water sources (i.e., the tap water) but run it through a series of filters from Culligan’s Aqua-Cleer line. The filter system can be customized to fit the particular needs of the area and the desires of the user.

Customers can choose from among 13 filters to cleanse the water, ranging from sediment and carbon filters to multi-stage reverse osmosis systems and specialty filters that remove arsenic, perchlorate or volatile organics.

Once the water has been filtered, it’s chilled and dispensed through the Culligan cooler. Gone, though, are those giant plastic bottles and the heavy lifting involved in getting them in place. Gone too are those days when the customers have drained the last bottle in storage and you’re still two days away from the next delivery.

Chicago-based Culligan is offering four models in this new line of Aqua-Cleer water coolers/dispensers:

• CC Ultra: available as a free-standing tower or mini countertop system, this cooler provides state of the art features. With its lighted push buttons, electronic controls, biological growth resistant “bio-cote” exterior, UV light and energy-saving hot tank sleep mode, it’s the ideal choice for any business setting.

• CC Custom: the large internal storage reservoir makes this free-standing cooler a great option for applications requiring reverse osmosis or nanofiltration. Designed to work with five stages of treatment, this system includes built-in automatic leak detection and shut-off.

• CC Plus/Plus UV: this popular, mid-range cooler offers a sleek style for basic water dispensing needs. With hot and cold dispensing ability, a hot water safety lock and a large four liter cold water tank, this workhorse dispenses drinking water with ease.

• CC Basic: an economical bottle-less cooler option, this sturdy tower provides hot/cold water, a single Aqua Cleer head for remote mounting and a dual float device shut-off for enhanced safety – making this ideal for smaller businesses, waiting rooms and reception areas.

The machines can be leased or purchased through local Culligan dealers and distributors. Pricing was not available from Culligan because that is “done at the dealer level,” a spokeswoman said.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

New York Gov. David Paterson has issued an executive order restricting the use of bottled water at state facilities and promoting executive agency sustainability.

The order, issued May 5th, will phase out the use of state funds to purchase single-serve bottles of water. Eventually, the state will purchase cooler-sized bottles of water and state agencies will provide tap water fountains and dispensers. The order gives government agencies 180 days to develop and begin implementation of a plan to eliminate the use of single-serve bottled waters.

“Bottled water is wasteful and requires large amounts of energy to bottle and transport,” Paterson said in a statement. According to the Container Recycling Institute, more than 60 million plastic bottles end up in landfills and incinerators every day.  The New York Department of Environmental Conservation, reports that manufacturing plastic bottles releases 800,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

“Taxpayers have spent billions of dollars to ensure that we have clean drinking water supplies,” Paterson said. “If we are going to make such significant investments, we should reap the benefits and use that water.” According to the NY DEC, tax payers spend $2 billion a year for their tap water.

New York is joining Virginia and Illinois who have also reduced government funding of single use bottled water.

(Photo courtesy of GovernorPaterson2010.com)

Copyright C 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Drinking a glass of water. It should be a simple thing. But as we Americans wean ourselves from plastic water bottles and return to the tap, there are a new set of questions that arise.

The main one: How safe is tap water?

There have been problems — lead, arsenic, cadmium, selenium and a variety of unfriendly microorganisms have turned up in city water systems. Last year, an AP investigation found  all sorts of medications (presumably flushed into the system) were persisting in treated water in systems across the country. So we’re all getting a little help with our blood pressure, whether we need it or not.

Many studies have shown that our tap water is mostly, by and large, as safe as a lot of bottled water. Often this is true because bottled water is just plain tap water that may or may not have been run through a separate filtering process that may or may not have included the reverse osmosis process needed to really clean that water.

Some bottled water has a better pedigree than tap, coming from real springs or mountains — but follow the carbon miles from France or wherever — and it becomes a true guilty pleasure. Many carbon emissions are emitted to get it here.

In much of the Western world, environmentally sensitive people are trying to get around the issue by using home filtration systems, either on the fridge or faucet, to cleanse the tap water.

Entrepreneurs are busy developing other options. Right now, we at GreenRightNow are trying out the Ecoloblue Atmospheric Water Generator — a machine that makes filtered water from air. Poof! It’s magic. Well, not quite. The machine uses de-humification technology, similar to the engineering behind that rattly old room dehumidifier that you might have encountered in past decades but very much updated with 21st Century computerization and a sophisticated system of filters. It captures, cleans and stores the water for your drinking pleasure instead of dumping it into a scummy collection tank to be discarded. This water is so pure tasting. It’s crystalline. (See snazzy red machine, right.)

But I digress. We’ll tell you about Ecoloblue later. Today I really wanted to mention this scary story about how a water sanitation supervisor in Fort Gibson, Okla., falsified reports, certifying the purity of the town’s water when he knew it exceeded the levels considered safe for chlorine. The water also exceeded safety standards for “turbidity” or clarity set by the EPA (high turbidity means the water is higher risk for carrying harmful microorganisms).

Fortunately, no one was harmed by this deception. The supervisor pleaded guilty in federal court last week, according to the Environmental News Service. He faces up to five years in prison or a fine of up to $250,000.

So our water is only as good as our water keepers.

By weird coincidence this is National Drinking Water Week. Who knew? Get some of your questions about tap water answered by the EPA. Start with their section on Ground Water and Drinking Water.

You can also read the annual reports about your local drinking water via the EPA website. Really, they do that. Just sign up for their Local Drinking Water Information service.

The EPA info is largely reassuring. But sometimes it only whets our appetite for more. Take this statement: “Over 90 percent of water systems meet EPA’s standards for tap water quality.”

OK…and the other 10 percent? That would be suitable for, say, flushing the toilet?

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

It’s no secret Americans are suckers for convenience. Consider how we’re losing the ability to make our own coffee. Or the fact that there are 2.8 cup holders per passenger in U.S.-made cars.

Of course what we’re putting in those cup holders may prove to be the most successful of convenience gambits, the plastic bottle of water. Once we got water from wells and then the tap; now we have factories bottle it up, package it, truck it around and then sell it to us. But you know that story.

Here’s a new one: That clear plastic marvel of modern marketing probably contains nothing much more than plain old tap water from somewhere that may or may not have been filtered as well as the water you could get from your own tap.

At the risk of sounding like Joe Biden, let’s say that again: It may or may not have been filtered as well as your own tap water.

That’s the gist of findings by the Environmental Working Group, which decided to look behind the “image of purity” promoted by bottled water sellers by lab testing water samples from ten common brands of bottled water.

The EWG findings, released today, concluded that “the purity of bottled water cannot be trusted.”

The tests uncovered a wide variety of contaminants in the bottled water, including bacteria and traces of fertilizer, Tylenol and industrial chemicals. Altogether, the study found 38 different toxins in the water samples, though the degree of contamination varied across brands, and across samples within some brands.

The chemicals were found at trace levels — and mimicked those often found in tap water — which was no mystery because bottled water is often sourced from municipal water, researchers said.

What was surprising, however, was that the bottled water, which many consumers believe to be more pure, was apparently not undergoing any better filtering than straight tap water, said Olga Naidenko, an EWG senior scientist and a co-author of the study.

“It is a buyer beware situation,” she said.

Consumers would be better served health-wise and economically to purchase a good carbon filter for their own tap, added researcher Nneka Leiba. Instead of buying cases of individual-sized bottled water that average near $4 per gallon, they could get a stainless steel reusable water bottle and fill it with water they know to be filtered from their own home. (For more advice see the EWG’s Guide to Safe Drinking Water.)

Not all of the bottled water tested was badly contaminated – though it all cost more than making your own carry-around bottle, Dr. Naidenko said.

Eight of the water brands tested did not have contaminants “high enough to warrant further testing,” according to the EWG.

But two brands, Sam’s Choice sold by Wal-Mart and Acadia, sold by the Giant Food supermarkets in the Mid-Atlantic states, did have chlorine byproducts that exceeded California’s guidelines for safety, but not the federal guidelines, according to the report.

The levels of those chemicals – belonging to the family of disinfection chemicals called trihalomethanes that sneak in as part of the water treatment process – did exceed by two to three times the bottled water industry’s own voluntary standard of 10 parts per billion (ppb).

Walmart told the EWG that it’s own tests did not find unsafe levels of those pollutants. Giant issued a statement saying its water meets required guidelines.

The problem with these trihalomethanes (THMs), which include chloroform, is that some are considered potential human carcinogens if they’re ingested or even, possibly, absorbed through the skin while showering.

“These chlorination products were the most toxic that we tested,” said Dr. Naidenko.

The tested bottled water came from several states: Connecticut, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, California and the District of Columbia.

The THM-contaminated water was purchased in California and traced back to Las Vegas tap water, according to the study. Similarly infected water, sold at Giant stores in the Mid-Atlantic, was traced back to tap water from D.C. suburbs in Maryland.

Bottled water does not have to meet any higher federal standards for purity than ordinary tap water. Companies are required to list the source of their water, but can avoid that disclosure if they choose instead to claim that they’ve used additional purification processes, according to the Washington-based EWG.

Americans paid $12 billion to drink 9 billion gallons of bottled water in 2007, the group reported.

The economics don’t improve when you consider the secondary cost to the environment:  Landfills brimming with these non-biodegradable, single-use modern wonders of convenience.

(Update: Pepsico reported this week that sales of bottled water are declining in the United States, according to the New York Times. Unfortunately, the company foresees layouts as a result.)

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Everyone knows by now that habitually buying bottled water introduces a staggering amount of wasted plastic into the world. Even if you conscientiously recycle every bottle, that recycling process uses energy and would be unnecessary if you used a non-disposable drinking vessel instead.

For those who have ditched the bottled water habit but don’t trust what comes from their tap, water filters are an appealing solution. Filter-makers have seized upon environmental concerns, and Brita even teamed with Nalgene for an ad campaign disguised as a green awareness effort that asks readers to “take the pledge” to buy filters and reusable bottles.

Filter users in America, though, are realizing that filters have eco-drawbacks of their own: Namely, they aren’t recyclable. A web site called Take Back the Filter focuses on Clorox, maker of the #1 selling Brita filter. Although the European version of Brita maintains a take-back recycling program, Clorox has no such option stateside; products can’t currently be recycled or refilled with new filter material. Take Back The Filter is urging users to send them used filters, which they intend to deliver en masse to the company as a protest.

Some small companies are trying to fill this niche. ZeroWater, for instance, announced just this week that they’ll begin a take-back program that recycles 90% of each filter; Abundant Earth offers a range of filtration products it says it recycles. But until these startups own a substantial chunk of the market, they won’t keep most filters out of landfills.

Happily, though, the major players may be shifting: Judging from Clorox responses described here, the company has hinted it may have recycling options available within the year. Until then, of course, many of us are perfectly comfortable with our tap water.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

It waits, patiently, in a corner of the pantry. It knows that it goes out on Tuesdays, doing its good work with a load of diet Coke cans, glass bottles, newspapers and plastics #1 and #2. Salad bar containers make guest appearances, and once in a while a Tide bottle livens things up with its vivid orange and blue, but that’s about as exciting as it gets for the recycling bin.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It’s the mantra of environmentally concerned people everywhere. Maybe you’ve gotten the third part of the equation conquered: If it’s glass, plastic, metal or paper, it goes in the bin. It saves space in the garbage and it saves resources for the planet. But what about the rest? Are you reducing your carbon footprint? Can you reuse more things than you do?

You can, easily, and here’s the best part: It will also save you money. Frugality gets its own cult-like devotion these days. In economically questionable times, anything that keeps a little more cash in our pocket is welcome. And while we’d all like to go out and buy hybrid vehicles and solar water heaters, it may be more practical right now to concentrate on small things that add up to make a difference. The key is, don’t think you have to overhaul your life. Look around your house, be conscious of your routines, and find small changes that work for you.

“I think the important thing to remember, when trying to go green to save green, is that you shouldn’t try to change too many habits too soon,” said author Leah Ingram, who writes The Lean Green Family, a blog that tells how she (pictured left), her husband and their two pre-teen daughters have adopted a green lifestyle and saved money at the same time.

“Take it slowly, doing one thing at a time, kind of like when you might go on a diet or start a new exercise program,” Ingram said. “Take baby steps. Soon enough it will all seem like second nature.”

How small can a baby step be? Here’s how small: Milk in your cereal. When you’ve finished your cereal, do you drink the milk from the bottom of the bowl, or do you throw it down the drain? If you’re the latter, cut the amount of milk on your cereal tomorrow by about half. Make it a goal to have the cereal and milk end at exactly the same time. Just a fourth of a cup of milk saved daily adds up to close to six gallons of milk in a year. That’s six gallons’ worth of containers that don’t have to be out in the world, and a nifty $20-$30 in your pocket.

Find other little things that save you that much in a year, and you can save hundreds of dollars. Reading through Ingram’s blogs, it’s clear there’s not a lean stone unturned. She finds uses for extra rubber bands (good for helping secure decorations on a front porch), saves wrapping paper from year to year, uses credit-card offer envelopes for her grocery lists (slipping her coupons inside), hangs clothes to dry in the laundry room instead of using the dryer.

She even pulls through parking spaces that are empty on the other side so she can face outward when she leaves. Just that saves half the gas of leaving a parking space. Talk about due diligence driving!

“I would recommend choosing one thing that you want to do differently, try it for a few weeks and then see how you feel. For example, if a family decides to invest in CFLs (compact fluorescent light bulbs), sure it might cost more than traditional bulbs, but I’m confident they will see the payoff pretty quickly. First of all, the bulbs won’t burn out as quickly as the incandescent kind, meaning they’ll spend less in the long run buying replacement bulbs. And secondly, if their experience is anything like mine, they will see their electricity bills go down.”

Here are some other areas where it might be easy to be green and frugal at the same time:

Daily living

• Let’s have a cup of coffee. Do you use paper coffee filters? A permanent coffee filter will cost you about $8 to $10. A common kind of paper filters costs about $2 for 40, so if you drink coffee daily the permanent filter will pay for itself in six months. After that, it’ll save you $18-$20 a year. And while we’re talking about coffee, do you throw out the grounds? They’re useful even if you haven’t (yet!) started a compost pile. Make saving coffee grounds easy on yourself. Put a container in your fridge where you keep used grounds, and then once a week take them out and work them into the soil around rose bushes, hydrangeas (especially if you want them blue!), azaleas, blueberries, laurels, rhododendrons or other acid-loving plants; you can also sprinkle them in bare spots in the lawn, but if you have pets, be sure to work them down into the dirt. Fast-growing vegetables like tomatoes thrive with coffee grounds used as mulch. And a ring of coffee grounds around a tree will deter ants (apparently they don’t crave caffeine like we do!). Not a coffee drinker? You can take home grounds from the office coffee pot. And many coffee houses will give them to you for free. (Like some Starbucks, pictured right.)

• Turn off the computer. “Enable the power management features on your computers,” said Denise Durrett of Communications Support with the EPA’s Energy Star program. Letting a computer hibernate during the hours you aren’t using it can save $12 to $90 a year, Durrett said. When you aren’t using your television or other electronics, unplug them or turn off the power strips. “Your electronics – computer, TV, VCR, even your phone chargers – use energy even when they’re turned off,” says the EPA’s Environment, Health and Safety Online website. “Stand-by power can account for as much as 20% of home energy use.” If you plug your television and other components into a power strip, turning them off just requires one switch, and a good one provides surge protection as well. Power strips aren’t inexpensive, but neither is your electric bill.

• Unplug the cell phone charger. “There are more than 5 power adapters for every person in the United States,” Durrett said. “That’s over 2 billion total. People have a habit of not unplugging the charger from the wall after the phone’s charged.” If every charger was an Energy Star approved charger, or was unplugged when not in use, it would mean a savings nationally of more than 5 billion kilowatt hours a year.

• Can you reuse instead of recycle? You’ve got the habit of tossing recyclables in the bin. Cheers! But are there items you could make better use of? Baby food jars or spice jars, for example, can be washed and reused as containers in school lunches (unless you have a klutz for a kid, in which case re-usable plastic is still probably your best friend). Round plastic plates that came with microwavable entrees can be used as water trays under flowerpots. Old prescription bottles are great change-holders in the car. And if you’ve got a dog, the sacks that newspapers are delivered in can be your constant companion on walks. The point is, take a second and look at what’s in your hand before it goes in the bin. Is it the size or shape of something useful? Can it store something? Stand in for something you would need to buy?

• Bottled water: We love bottled water. We unabashedly adore it. We are especially grateful for it when we’re in a convenience store and don’t want soda. But those bottles add up, both in the landfill and in the budget. Say you buy a case of bottled water once a week for $5. That’s $260 a year. Say you buy a refillable water bottle (be sure to get one labeled BPA-free) and use it. That’s $260 in your pocket.

• Dryer sheets: If you use dryer sheets, most of them will easily work for two loads of laundry; you’ll end up buying half the boxes of dryer sheets you used to buy. And after you’ve dried clothes with them, put the dryer sheet in a container near your cleaning supplies. They make great dust cloths for everything from furniture to computer screens, they hold up to cleaning products, and they’ll even clean glass without smears.

• While we’re in the laundry room: Set the washing machine for the lowest water level you need for each load, or do only full loads as some greenies advise, and wash your clothes in cold. “The best thing anyone could do to start living like a lean, green family would be to stop washing clothes in hot water,” Ingram said. “Your clothes will get just as clean when you wash them in cold water, and you won’t be spending money (or using energy) to heat your water.”

• Green cleaners: We’re lucky today. There have always been green cleaners you can make from scratch, but now there are also manufactured green cleaners on the shelves at the store besides traditional cleaning products. Regular cleaners cost from $3 to $4 each, and you need separate products for tubs, windows, furniture and floors. Most green cleaners are comparably priced, but can clean a variety of areas. However, if you invest in a gallon of white vinegar ($1.50), a pound of baking soda (.75) and a quart of Murphy’s Oil Soap concentrate ($3.45), you’ve got the makings to clean just about every surface in your house, whether wood, tile, granite, porcelain, laminate or vinyl. If this saves you the purchase of just one $4 bottle of cleaner a month, that’s a $48 savings over the year.

• At the store: When you buy a disposable product, ask yourself if a reusable product would work for you too. Paper towels have become ubiquitous in most households, especially those with kids or pets, but cloth kitchen towels will cut down on the volume you use. Keep one or two out on the counter and grab the one that makes the most sense for the job at hand.

• In the car: We’re all happy at the trend of idle-free zones around schools; it keeps a cloud of exhaust from building up where parents are picking up their children, and it keeps extra carbon emissions out of the air. Be sure to realize, though, that you’re saving money at the same time! Try to be conscious of your idling when you are in long drive-through lanes, bank teller lanes, or parking lots after sporting events. Many times the fast-food drive-through is many cars long while there’s no line inside. And while we’re talking about the car, be sure you’ve got it tuned up and the tires inflated correctly. If conscious driving and good maintenance saves you just a gallon of gas a month, that’s more than $50 by the end of a year. And if you could take a bus, ride with a coworker or find an alternate way to work just once a week, you’d save a fifth of your commuting costs.

“When it comes to your car, I realize that not everyone can walk to do errands or leave the car at home on a regular basis,” Ingram said. “But that doesn’t mean that you have to drive to Point A to Point B and Point C, and so on. Figure out a way in your daily life how you can drive less. When you have errands to run, can you park in a central place and walk to the stores? Could you plan a trip to the supermarket or the mall with a friend, so only one of you has to drive? I still use my car and I still have to fill up with gas, but I’m doing both a lot less now that I’ve adapted to my walking lifestyle.”

Drinking tap, not bottled, water is gaining momentum in restaurants from coast to coast. The “Take Back the Tap” campaign began in March in San Francisco, although some restaurants had already been forgoing bottled water on their own. It grew to include cities such as Alburquerque, Memphis, Omaha, Portland, Seattle and San Diego, and this past summer, the Big Apple.

The program is sponsored by Food and Water Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit consumer rights organization that looks at corporate control and abuse of the country’s food and water resources. The New York Take Back the Tap campaign also is sponsored by Riverkeeper, a Hudson River environmental protection group.

“Our goal is to make sure that people have safe and affordable drinking water,” says Food and Water Watch (FWW) executive director Wenonah Hauter. “Food and Water Watch promotes a clean water trust fund that protects [the country's] 1.5 million miles of water structure.”

“The good news is that our public utilities do a good job of providing clean water, but with aging pipes, we need to maintain that infrastructure,” she says.

“The problem with bottled water,” she says “is that it’s unregulated…It gets tested maybe once a week, and once it’s bottled, there is no testing.”

“Tap water, on the other hand, is highly regulated by the EPA. It gets tested 300 to 400 times a month. Public utilities have to test their water. With bottled water, you don’t know what you’re getting.”

Not to mention that using tap water could prevent billions of plastic water bottles from piling up in landfills. Americans alone use an estimated 70 million disposable plastic water bottles every day, according to a report by the Container Recycling Institute.

Craig Stoll, who owns Delfina restaurant in San Francisco, says, “We stopped serving bottle water for the past couple of years. We never get any negative comments. Customers are totally on board with it.” Stoll says he grew up drinking the tap water in New York City. He found similar good-tasting water when he moved to San Francisco.

Even though there’s a loss of revenue when a restaurant stops selling bottled water and purchases a carbonator so they can serve bubbly water, it’s still worth it because it’s the right thing to do, Stoll said.

In New York City, Joe Bastianich, co-owner of Del Posto, says, “To spend fossil fuel trucking water around the world is absurd. Water should be as local as anything gets. That’s why we’re taking the lead on this, and encouraging other New York City restaurants to do the same.”

“Our Take Back the Tap program helps educate people about this through restaurants,” Hauter says. Food and Water Watch also promotes the program on college campuses. In some cases, students are helping break their school’s contract with bottled water companies.

Some smaller and medium-sized cities where the program is active include Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, and Madison, Wisc., home to the University of Wisconsin. (Northhampton, Mass., and Portland, Maine.)

Recently, Food and Water Watch provided the water for the Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco (see picture above by FWW) where 60,000 participants drank water without bottles. Instead, says Hauter, they brought their own refillable bottles, used FWW’s steel bottles or used biodegradeable plastic cups from the utility companies.

Big corporations, says Hauter, “take our water for practically nothing and tell us it’s chic and healthy when they sell it back to us in a pretty bottle for exorbitant prices. New York City tap water is just as safe and healthy as bottle water, and is a far more cost-effective choice.”

James Simpson, staff attorney with New York’s Riverkeeper protection group, agrees. Like Food and Water Watch, Riverkeeper helps educate the public, he says. On Oct. 12, they are hosting Waterfest along the Hudson River side of Manhattan.

“Waterfest will celebrate the Hudson River and New York City’s great tap water,” he said.

NInety percent of New York City’s water comes from water supply system that flows from the Catskills, he explains. The city consumes about 1.2 billion gallons of water a day. The Catskills water system got started in the 1920s and includes two reservoirs and an aqueduct that lies beneath the Hudson. Without today’s technological advances available, workers shoveled through bedrock to create the aqueduct, which Simpson considers a modern-day wonder.

Interestingly, says Simpson, “New York City’s water is not filtered, yet it is safe to drink and tasty. New York City reservoirs are so pure – it’s just the nature of its ecology – that it doesn’t require filtering.”

On the subject of bottled vs tap water, there’s no contest, Simpson says. Tap water is not only cheaper, it’s better for the environment.

Riverkeeper’s mission is to make sure New York City lives up to the Take Back the Tap program. They make sure pollutants don’t get into the reservoirs and they protect the land in and around the Catskills. “By making sure no development occurs, this will protect our watershed – the area of land from which all surface water draws.”

• For information on reducing bottle waste and converting to tap water for your own event or workplace see the FWW guide on “freeing your event” from bottled water.
• If your university campus, city government, or community group wants to break the bottled water habit, leaders can sign theTake Back the Tap pledge or they contact Food & Water Watch.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media