Avoid bottled water

Humans require at least two litres of drinking water a day to keep our bodies hydrated and with our increasingly busy lifestyles, more and more people are purchasing bottled water. In 2009-10 approximately 582.9 million litres of bottled water was consumed (IBISWorld Bottled Water Manufacturing in Australia, January 2010). Australians spend more than half a billion dollars a year on bottled water. Year on year, the sale of bottled water increases by at least 2.5 percent. While bottled water has become a lucrative business for a few multi-nationals, it has created another hit on the environment and hip pocket for most.

If you’re a consumer of bottled water, the following three areas of concern, may have you questioning and avoiding bottled water:

Scientists at Goethe University in Frankfurt housed estrogen sensitive snails in PET plastic bottles and glass bottles for an eight week period. Eight weeks later, female snails living in plastic bottles had more than twice as many embryos inside their bodies compared to the glass-grown snails. Similar studies have revealed similar results, with evidence mounting that levels of estrogenic-compounds in water held in plastic bottles is surprisingly high.

The effect of higher estrogens on the human body includes increased body fat, depression and headaches, increased risk of breast cancer, decreased libido, increased blood clotting amongst many others.

In contrast, tap water requires no additional water to reach you and drinking water out of a tap uses only 0.2 mega joules (or 13 per cent of the energy used in bottled water) of energy according to the assistant director of design at RMIT University.

1. Personal health risks. The polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics used in the common drinking water bottle have been thought of as benign until recent research found that estrogenic compounds leach from the plastic into the water.
2. Environmental impact and cost. To produce a single one litre plastic bottle of water requires seven litres of water and 1.5 megajoules of energy. Plastic bottles are made from oil with an estimated 50 million litres of oil used per year in Australia to manufacture the plastic bottles we consume. Out of all plastic bottles approximately 36 per cent are recycled, with over 400 million plastic bottles entering landfill every year.
3. Financial Cost. A litre of tap water costs less than 1 per cent of the cost of a litre of bottled water that costs over $2.50 per litre. Australians spend more than half a billion dollars a year on bottled water. Last year, the sale of bottled water increased by 10 percent, for something that's essentially free!