Is Bottled Water Green?
The label of Green Planet bottled water
Yet the marketeers of bottled water companies are working hard to convince you that drinking it actually helps the environment. Save your money and don’t fall for it.
Green Planet is one of the more recent bottled water vendors on the market. I’ll analyze the hype on the bottle:
Green Planet: The environmentally friendly bottle.
Digital Rabbit: It burns great because it was made from plants, not oil. They still have to use up energy to fabricate the bottle, make the inks, and so on. The most environmentally friendly container is a reusable one, like a glass.
Green Planet: Quench your thirst and your desire to help the environment.
Digital Rabbit: You can just as easily quench your thirst by turning on your own tap. Then take the money your were going to spend on the bottled water and donate it to a true environmental cause.
Green Planet: Pure Handcrafted Water.
Digital Rabbit: What does that mean? Did someone take hydrogen and mix it with oxygen? I think not. This is pure B.S. I described my water system a few days ago. There is nothing to “handcrafted water.” Turn on the pump, extract the water from the ground. It probably doesn’t even need treatment.
Green Planet: By choosing our water you’re helping reduce global warming, carbon emissions and our dependency on oil.
Digital Rabbit: Pure B.S. You are actually contributing to global climate change and increasing dependency on oil. The bottle takes energy to manufacture. The bottled water takes gasoline to transport. (Water is heavy, too.) Manufacturing and transportation emit carbon.
My advice. Drink tap water.
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December 20th, 2009 at 6:04 am
Interesting post here.
Merry xmas x
December 21st, 2009 at 10:27 am
Priya,
You missed the point. Its better in all ways than petroleum bottles and there are many tap waters that are not clean in the US. Just read the papers. For those who have clean tap they can use the tap if they wish. Although we agree we are in a society of convenience, i wonder what you are doing personally to help foster a positive change? Is your laptop Solar? Do you use a hair dryer? What about the make up you purchase? The clothes you purchase, are they all natural handwoven? Sustainable? Until you take a hard look at all you do you shouldnt be so judgemental and negative to others.
Please do not make statements about products or companies without understanding the scope of what your speaking about. It takes a village to effect positive change and only one person with email like yours to mess it up. We would appreciate your thoughtful response looking at a larger picture. This brand and its efforts are not selfish and there are many people who are benefiting from our Vapor Distilled Water. Also used for cancer patients and dialysis patients. Handcrafted was a process in which we added only the highest quality minerals for purity and tasts, your comments are so short sighted and simply lazy. It takes no time to cut others down and a great deal of energy to do the right things in life. Thank you for listening and All the best in 2010
December 30th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Green Planet and other brands of water are being sold to people and companies who have access to perfectly fine tap water. If you have access to clean drinking water, the most “green” action you can take is to drink that tap water. Use a cup or other reusable container, turn on the tap, and drink it. Bottled water is not environmentally friendly — regardless of the bottle that’s used.
December 30th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Brad,
You really need to go go back to PR School. I love your argument in your first paragraph. You assume Digital Rabbit does also sorts of other bad environmental things, therefore DR should not comment on your massively over priced and environmentally harmful product! Next you make a personal attack assuming DR knows nothing about your product. The rest of your argument is just more pure nonsense. You say the you shouldn’t be judgmental and negative about others. Why not? If you have a pointless, environmentally harmful, and wasteful product such as yours, why should’t DR let people know? This is what true activism is all about. What you are advertising is know as “Slactavism”. “Buy my product and save the world”. It is like those sites that say click on this link and save the whales. Even if your bottle is not made of PET, it will still end up as litter and its contents are definitely environmentally unfrieindly.
1. If your local water isn’t very good, spend the cost of a few bottles of your water and get an under the sink carbon filter at your local hardware store.
2. It looks like your product costs $30 for 24 .5L bottles which makes it about $10 per gallon. Why on earth would anybody pay $10/gallon for something that they can get from the tap for free? I can buy more than 3 gallons of gasoline for that price and it takes a heck of a lot more to pump and refine oil into gasoline than to distill water.
3. How much energy does it take to distill water anyway? Besides creating a whole lot of pollution and green house gases hauling this stuff around, how much do you create with the energy required to distill water?
4. How much energy does it take to create your “High quality minerals”? I suppose they are somehow better than the low quality minerals that you just distilled out?
5. I will grant that there are hospitals that give their patients bottled water, but are you seriously saying that your magic water can help cure cancer and kidney failure?
6. It is actually easy to just ignore the presence of useless, wasteful products. It takes concern and energy to help educate the public to the environmental harm and stupidity of purchasing bottled water instead of filtering and drinking water bottled from your own tap.
Do the right things in life and ignore the false advertising hype trying to convince you to buy something you don’t need. Remember “A fool and his money are soon parted” and anybody who pays $10 a gallon for water is a fool.
The Wanderer
January 6th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
Cecil Adams wrote an interesting piece on compostable plastics that’s relevant to the bottled water issue. See What’s up with compostable plastics? on the Straight Dope website:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2915/whats-up-with-compostable-plastics
February 12th, 2010 at 10:50 am
I agree. Bottled water has been overrated for years. This is just another ploy to get people to BUY it.
February 15th, 2010 at 6:03 am
[...] one of the reasons why I posted Is Bottled Water Green? some time back. Focusing on whether the bottle itself is better than some other bottle totally [...]
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