D is for Don't buy bottled water

D is for Don't Buy Bottled Water

There are plenty of reasons why I recommend avoiding purchasing bottled water. Water should never be a commodity. Water should never be a monopoly. Everyone is entitled to clean drinking water at an affordable price. Bottled water is literally just tap water. For the purpose of this series, I will focus on just two aspects of bottled water: expense and pollution.

Did you realize that water is one of the most expensive liquids you can buy in the market? Let's use gas prices for proof. On July 17th, Americans suffered from record breaking gas prices with a national average of $4.11. In some states, gas prices rose to over $5 dollars a gallon. Today, the national average of gasoline is $2.10 per gallon. And is it really possible that a bottle of water still costs more than a gallon of gas at its highest price?

Example 1:

• How many 20 oz bottles of Dasani are in a gallon (128 oz)? 6.4 bottles of water
• How much is a single bottle of Dasani? I think $1 dollar is a fair average
• How much does a gallon of Dasani water cost? $6.41 a gallon (I used this value because the majority of customers do not purchase Dasani water by the gallon)
• And the highest national average of gasoline was only $4.11 a gallon? SERIOUSLY?

In addition to the obscene cost of a bottle of water, the environmental impact of bottled water in this country only is disgusting. Americans discard 30 million water bottles every day, according to the Sierra Club. (This is roughly 10% of our population.) And though most bottles are made of recyclable plastic, only 13 percent of them actually get recycled. In 2006, an estimated 17 million barrels of oil went into producing these bottles—not counting the gasoline used in distribution.


I do recognize that never buying bottled water is not perfect solution. Sometimes purchasing a bottle of water is your only option. And I also recognize that my example was using one of the most expensive brands of water in the market. But this does not change the fact that bottled water remains one of the most expensive liquids in our society, Americans are spending millions of dollars on tap water, and 30 million bottles discarded each day does have a significant negative impact on our environment.

So before you reach into that refrigerator at your local grocery store or gasoline station, consider how much money you could save by bringing a reusable water bottle from home. Buy a water purifying system with the money you will save.

Here are the fun new water bottles Josh and I are getting each other for Christmas: