At $7 for 1.76 oz., Avéne Thermal Spring Water is one of the most expensive water products on the planet. It’s water in a spray bottle that, when sprayed on the skin, “calms, soothes, and softens.”

Guess what else? It’s advertised as preservative-free!

Instructions for use: Spray on skin, leave on for a few minutes, then pat dry. Use as often as needed.

The bottled water industry seems more outrageous every day. But someone must be falling for this marketing. Peter Glieck just released a book that provides some insight. Check it out: Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water.

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MaHaLo Hawaiian Deep Sea Water is $15 a gallon. Gas in California is only $3.

The latest in the bottled water industry is desalinated sea water. Hey, isn’t that just water? No, MaHaLo explains:

“The Deep Sea Water used for MaHaLo bottled drinking water is very old. It takes between 1,200 and 2,000 years for the water to travel from the North Atlantic Ocean through the freezing Arctic currents, under the vast glaciers of Greenland, where it gathers ancient minerals that leach down from the ice. Then it flows around and back down toward the deep channels of the Pacific Ocean. It is there, at the Water Rejuvenation Zone just off the coast of Kona, Hawaii, that the water is at its very purest. ”

I’m not sure how they know that the water molecules they pull from Hawaii have actually taken that route over that time period. One thing I do know is that the water from the tap in my kitchen is delicious, fresh, clean, contains trace minerals and is FREE!!! That’s right, absolutely free. No cost. What’s more, it doesn’t require transportation in trucks and it doesn’t create pollution with plastic bottles. Tap water is ecological. Bottled water, no matter what the cost, is not.

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Take Back the Tap has a guide with lots of actions you can take to help restaurants stop selling and serving bottled water. They also list restaurants around the USA that have taken a pledge against bottled water.

Take the pledge to take back the tap!

Bottled water creates trash. Photo courtesy of Take Back the Tap. Click to learn more about bottled water and the environment.

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This text and video from The Story of Stuff. Check out their great website. Contribute to help them produce more videos like this.

Bottled water is a problem in itself, but it is also a sign of a much larger problem too much needless consumption, too much unnecessary waste, and too much advertising to convince us we will be happier or better off if we just had a new (insert any consumer good here.)

The Story of Bottled Water, released on March 22, 2010 (World Water Day) employs the Story of Stuff style to tell the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over five minutes, the film explores the bottled water industrys attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to take back the tap, not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all.

Our production partners on the bottled water film include five leading sustainability groups: Corporate Accountability International, Environmental Working Group, Food & Water Watch, Pacific Institute, and Polaris Institute.

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When I discovered Bling H2O, I realized all the doom and gloom about the economy must be made up. We live in a country where people will pay $50 for a 750 ml. bottle of Bling H2O. Do you think it’s the fact the bottle on the Bing H2O website is positioned between the heel and buttocks of some almost-nude model? Or is it the corked, reusable, frosted glass bottles with the crystals on it that sells it? Perhaps the cost is worth the impression you make when you carry around Bling H2O in Hollywood.

The water is from Tennessee. Does that state really have water that tastes that good? I guess you’ll have to buy a bottle and try it. Let me know if you do. If you have that kind of money to throw around, consider donating the money to fund a water project in a developing country. $50 USD will get someone 2,000 days of fresh water.

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I’ve posted a lot of blogs about bottled water vs. tap water. The cost of bottled water is ridiculously high. But there are many companies that produce outrageously expensive bottled water. I mean OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive water. Like $45 for a 750 ml bottle. You got it right. A wine bottle’s worth of water for forty-five dollars USD. Hey, you can get a couple of decent bottles of wine for that price. That’s Elsenham Water.

Why so expensive? Their website explains the exceptional quality of this water:

Elsenham Still Artesian Spring Water is rich in minerals particularly calcium, iron, low in sodium and rich in strontium, which is good for bone density. The water is decades old and bottled at source from a deep underground chalk confined aquifer, and due to its depth absolutely pure.

But there is more. If you are not convinced about the water, consider the bottle, which is the essence of high-end design:

Elsenham Still Artesian Spring Water is positioning itself at the luxury premium end of the market, with a highly exclusive distribution approach. The bottle and the cap are like architecture and unique, with both having been registered with full copy right design rights. It has been designed to reflect the purity of the water and is unlike any other bottle.

What do you know about Strontium?

Wikipedia says:

The human body absorbs strontium as if it were calcium. Due to the elements being sufficiently similar chemically, the stable forms of strontium might not pose a significant health threat—in fact, the levels found naturally may actually be beneficial (see below) — but the radioactive 90Sr can lead to various bone disorders and diseases, including bone cancer. The strontium unit is used in measuring radioactivity from absorbed 90Sr.

How do you know which form you are getting?

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If you insist that bottled water is better than tap, even after you watch this, send me your money and I’ll mail you back my special “Mountain Spring” bottled water.

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Would you like that with or without malaria? Watch this creative way some New Yorkers raised money for the UNICEF Tap Project.

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Derek goes “Inside the Bottle” and exposes the billion dollar fib we’re been made to swallow. To learn more visit: www.bottledwaterfreeday.ca

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If you drink bottled water, you might be concerned with the composition of the plastic bottle that the water comes in. The Straight Dope has a great article you should read: What’s up with compostable plastics?

An excerpt from the article:

So what’s compostable plastic good for? It’s made from a renewable resource, namely corn, but that doesn’t necessarily make it environmentally friendly. Writing in Scientific American in 2000, Tillman Gerngross and Steven Slater pointed out that manufacturing PLA required more fossil fuels than it takes to make most plastics, canceling out the environmental benefit.

They weren’t completely down on the stuff, though, and pointed out two benefits you might not suspect. First, much of the energy needed to turn corn into plastic could be obtained by burning the stalks and leaves, known as stover, which are normally discarded. Second, they argue, we don’t reallywant PLA to biodegrade — just the opposite. The big push these days is on figuring out ways to sequester carbon so it doesn’t enter the atmosphere as CO2, one of the major greenhouse gases. What better way to do that than grow corn, which sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere, then use the corn to make plastic, which can be buried underground after use?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying this is accepted scientific advice. But it’s not out of the question that years from now the environmentally responsible thing may be to use all the plant-derived plastic packaging you can and then throw the stuff away.

If you are really concerned, you’ll give up drinking bottled water. Then you won’t have to worry about the origin and future of the plastic bottle.

Thanks to The Wanderer for the pointer to The Straight Dope.

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