Start off the new year with a resolution that is good for you and good for the environment: quit buying bottled water!
Worried about being different? Don’t. It’s totally on trend. In fact, carafes filled with tap water are so ‘in’ that they are everywhere.
Is it too tedious for you to refill a carafe a few times a day? Then go big and choose the stylish, family sized Ovopur. I saw them up close and in use recently in the VIP tent at a Cirque du Soleil show and they are really fantastic!
At home do you serve individual glasses of water for each person at the table or do you place a bottle of water on the table at mealtime?
Like many people, I used to buy bottled water frequently. My main motivation was convenience although I have to admit that I wasn’t smart enough not to buy into the notion that imported water was better than the stuff out of my tap. (Yes, I was a victim of marketing, it’s true!). As my awareness of the carbon footprint I was enlarging by trucking water around the globe grew, I reevaluated my habits.
Now I use my Sigg water bottle when I’m on the go. And at home, when I want to take water to the table to share, I fill up these old Tavel wine bottles. The look is fun and the bottles are easier to pour from than a heavy pitcher.
Besides making these small changes in your own behaviour that will help the planet, you can help the almost 890 million earthlings who still must use unsafe drinking water sources. It’s as easy as making a small donation to the TAP Project which collects funds for UNICEF’s water, sanitation, and hygiene programs in developing countries.
I know we are knee deep in a sea of recessionary tears, but if we all skip buying bottled water at lunch time or the gym a couple of times this week and donate that money instead, we can make a significant impact.
Have your drinking water habits changed in the last two years? If so, how?
Back in the early nineties, I worked at a posh spa that had a Water Bar where dozens of different kinds of bottled water were available for guests to drink. These bottles came from all over the world and had been chosen by a water sommelier who assured us that they were each as distinctive as wine from various locations.
In the last two decades, bottled water has become more than just a convenient way to offer people a drink; it’s a revenue stream (pun intended) for soft drink companies as well as for restaurants who sell bottles of ubiquitous filtered water for $5 to $10 and, in some cases, premium waters such as Bling H2O (it’s considered premium ‘cause the bottle is fancy!) for more than $40 a bottle.
More than a year ago the aptly named Alice Waters, culinary icon and owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California, quit offering bottled water in her restaurant in favour of purified tap water. What started as a choice rooted in her own opinion about conservation and reducing the size of the carbon footprint created when bottled water is shipped across the globe has started a valuable debate in not just the restaurant industry but other communities as well.
After all, why do we need to buy bottled water for home or the office when a filtration system can be added to any tap to make the water taste as clean and fresh as it would if it came all the way from a Tasmanian spring?
