Message in a Water Bottle

19 July, 2010

By Christie Lee Sharpe

Living in Australia we have to count ourselves very lucky, we have some of the cleanest water in the world. However I read in an article that Australian's spent more than $500 million on bottled water in recent years! But what are we really paying for? According to the www.cleanup.org 90% of the cost of the water bottle can be traced back to the bottle, the lid and the label.

So why are we wasting our precious money when we have FREE clean drinking water in our own backyard's? Is bottled water better for you? Most probably not, unless you live in an area where the town water is really unsafe to drink.

Well It's definitely not sustainable! The department of Environment and Climate Change estimates that 200ml of oil is used to produce, package, transport and refrigerate each litre of bottled water. As a result, at least 50 million litres of oil are used in the manufacture and distribution of bottled water in Australia every year. Now that is hard to swallow, especially after the most recent oil spill in the Gulf and not to mention the amount of waste that is produced that can end up in our oceans.

I don't want to harp on too much about the negatives, because most of us know that plastics aren't environmentally friendly. But what other options are out there? Well I did some research and found some much better alternatives to the plastic water bottle.

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