Bottled Water likened to Driving a Hummer - think about it.

Found this morning at Path to Freedom Journal and I just have to share this here....I so agree, I so agree.

BOTTLED WATER IS LIKE DRIVING A HUMMER
Be Part of the Solution

ENDING BOTTLED WATER ADDICTION WILL SAVE MONEY & ENVIRONMENT {from Organic Consumer Association}

BOTTLED WATER ISN'T NECESSARILY CLEANER: According to the San Francisco Chronicle and lawsuits from the Environmental Law Foundation, 40% of bottled water is really just repackaged tap water. Maybe that's a good thing, considering federal standards for tap water are actually higher than those for bottled water.

BOTTLED WATER AND OIL: Supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, according to the Container Recycling Institute. That's enough to take 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Add in the additional amount of oil it takes to ship the bottles thousands of miles from extraction source to recipient, and your drink of H2O could be categorized with the "Hummers" of the world.

BOTTLED WATER AND BIODEGRADABILITY: Buddha's bones turned to dust a long time ago. But if he had been a bottled water drinker, that plastic would still be laying around. It takes two minutes to drink a bottle of water, but it takes thousands of years for that piece of plastic garbage to go away.

SOLUTION: Buy a water filter and a non-plastic water container of your preferred size. Fill it up in the morning before you go to work or school. Do a quick online search, and you can also find affordable portable water filters for when you are traveling. You'll save yourself and the environment a lot of expense.

And, I would add, that there are instances where the convenience of bottled water is helpful, ie, disaster - Hurricane Katrina-, flood, outages, storms, emergencies. On the other hand, in a documentary I saw that was rather chilling - 'The Corporation' - there well may be something to the underlying premise that conditioning populations to 'pay for drinking water' is just that - conditioning. We've been well conditioned to become avid 'consumers' and buying products is equated to our supposed well being but is it really?



Follow the money and you will come to learn that Big Corporations didn't get that way without some clever, smart 'marketing' over the decades. Even back to the 1940s or earlier corporations were envisioning this kind of future where they owned everything we would need to live - food, shelter, water, clothing, medicine etc. I could go on and on, but I won't. I have to say though that the idea of 'paying for bottled water' is a new concept as only a few years back who would have even thought to pay for drinking water? It was hyped as more pure, cleaner and had a bit of a social elevation twinge to it - a kind of labeling that said I'm too good to drink just any water, I have this bottle of (fill in the name label)....



First it was actual glass bottles, then plastic bottles, then the image became one of the 'active person' into exercise, sports, health, good parent concerned about children and family, well being sort of imaging. First it was some few companies manufacturing bottled water, now how many companies make bottled water available as a 'for sale product'? In one of the South America countries, and I forget which one, perhaps Brazil, there was effort by the money makers to charge the people for 'rain water'. That's right - rain, falling out of the sky, captured in barrels and containers for use as family drinking and cooking water - and being charged for doing so ---- think about it. Rain - free resource - who can own the rain? A long time ago, the Native Americans found it an equally perculiar concept that the Europeans coming to America believed they could own the land.

What kind of carbon imprint are you (we) leaving? Whatever your consumption and the carbon imprint it leaves is the inheritance of your children and their children. I rather like the idea of giving some thought to personal responsibility and our own carbon imprint. There isn't a lot we can do about Big Corporation and launching any kind of campaign to get them to change their behavior or take responsibility takes enormous energy and resources. However, if each of us becomes different kind of consumer and more interested in our own carbon imprint, corporations will by their very nature be forced to alter their behavior.

Another blog entry and I'll write about Montsano - the Big Corporation who has already done what none others have done - taken out patents on seeds (food) - as if a living thing can be patented. That's not all - but more on that another time.