Weaning ourselves off the bottle

Whether or not you read about it in the Climate Change exhibition, you probably already know that bottled water carries a high environmental cost. But have you thought about the hit your wallet takes? Eric Yaverbaum, of Tappening, an anti-bottled water enterprise, has done the math. He estimates that “if you drink 8 glasses a day you will spend $1400 a year buying bottled water” — versus 49 cents for the stuff that comes out of the tap. Based on a typical price of $3.79 per gallon, the Environmental Working Group prices bottled water at 1,900 times the cost of public tap water — and reports that Americans drink twice as much of it as they did ten years ago. That’s probably because they’re worried about crud in the water supply, but tap water in the U.S. is subject to more rigorous purity and testing standards. An October, 2008, study of 10 major brands conducted by the Environmental Working Group found “a surprising array of chemical contaminants,” including disinfectants, fertilizer residue, and pain meds. So ditching the habit can be good for our health, as well as for our budgets and our planet.