Some History for You...

Bottled water consumption has increased rapidly over the last two decades. The consumption of bottled water in the world increases by an average of 12% each year, particularly in Europe and North America. One possible explanation is the severely polluted water in Europe caused by agricultural and industrial development. According to Earth Policy Institute, the consumption of bottled water in the U.S. increased from 4.725 million gallons in 2000 to 8,254 million gallons in 2006. Along with the growing popularity of drinking bottled water, environmental and health concerned institutions did researches on the safety and consequences of drinking bottled water. One of the foremost study was released from the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1999, which is called “Bottled Water, Pure Drink pr Pure Hype?”. The results were remarkable: almost 40% of all bottled water actually comes from the tap, 60% to 70% of bottled water sold in U.S. is exempt from the FDA's bottled water standards. The findings raised the public's awareness of the defects of bottled water.

Since then, ban-bottled-water campaigns began to launch around the world. In 2007, the San Francisco Government prohibited the use of city money to purchase bottled water. In 2008, TapIt in New York successfully pulled a good few of restaurants and cafes together to provide drinking water to the public, so as to minimize the purchase of bottled water. In Australia, Bundanoon was the first town in NSW that voted to ban bottled water by the locals in 2009. In addition, Massachusetts and Toronto both voted to ban the sale of all bottled water by 2011. There were also smaller scale bottled water bans in schools. Schools in several countries have banned bottled water and launched water stations.

Find out more:

NRDC:            

Earth Policy Institute          

Food and Water Watch:

See you soon!!!