break the bottled water habit...

i frequently read a great blog called "no impact man." a quick synopsis of his website:

"a guilty liberal finally snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nut, turns off his power, composts his poop, and, while living in new york city. generally turns into a tree-hugging lunatic who tried to save the polar bears and the rest of the planet from environmental catastrophe while dragging his baby daughter and prada-wearing, four seasons-loving wife along for the ride."

anyway, the center for a new american dream has asked for no impact man's help in kick-starting a national campaign to break the bottled water habit. their hope is for their efforts to go viral--for readers to email friends, who email their friends, who email their friends, and on and on and on--and for people to sign the following pledge:

"i pledge to break the bottled water habit by thinking outside the bottle and using a reusable water bottle instead of buying bottled water. i also pledge to support the efforts of local officials to stop spending public funds on bottled water and prioritize strong public water systems over bottled water profits."

sounds good to me. i haven't purchased bottled water in quite some time. plastic-bottled water, that is. this is my first week of giving up 6 out of 7 days of purchasing coffee, so that lucy and i can attend mom & baby yoga while still staying in our budget. as a cheap treat, i've bought a couple of bottles of sparkling water from trader joe's. the bottles are glass, which certainly isn't fantastic, but it's still far better than plastic (please tell me i'm right!). and as a rule i fill up our klean kanteens before we leave home so i'm never desperate for a drink while we're out & about.

anyway, here's the no impact man post. check it out if you can--there's a really great nightline video where people do a blind taste test of bottled water and new york city tap water. guess which wins out??? he's also got quick facts like these (along with some other great links):

~bottled water is up to 1,000 times more expensive than tap water
~forty percent of bottled water is tap water anyway
~bottled water is less stringently regulated than the FDA than tap water
~the transportation of water around the world by ship and plane causes unnecessary carbon emissions

and here's another (from newdream.org, the pledge site):

bottled water is full of oil. making bottles to meet americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 cars for a year. (new york times) to put it another way, the entire energy costs of the lifecycle of a bottle of water is equivalent, on average, to filling up a quarter of each bottle with oil. (pacific institute).

ugh.

even if you don't visit no impact man's blog, you can still click here to sign the pledge. i did!