Since founding Living A Greener Life, I’ve often said that one of the simplest changes you can make to live greener is to stop drinking bottled water. Switching to a reusable water bottle is an inexpensive and easy step you can take to live greener that over time can have lasting effects on the environment.

Today is the fourth annual Blog Action Day where thousands of blogs in over 100 countries are focusing on one issue that effects everyone on earth: water. Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water and are subject to preventable disease and even death. However in the US, most of us have access to clean water from our taps, yet we continue to consume an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year.  And according to Annie Leonard’s video “The Story of Bottle Water,” over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled.  Additionally a larger percentage of bottled water comes from the same source as tap water.  So bottled water manufacturers are bottling and selling water back to consumers for hundreds and possibly thousands of times the cost.

In the documentary “Tapped the Movie,” the film takes a full cycle look at America’s addiction to bottled water and illustrates how the big manufactures obtain water from towns through legal loopholes.  It also shines a light on the chemicals used in the production of these bottles that could be leaching into the water we drink and lack of FDA regulations.  Most bottled water drinkers think the water is healthier than tap water when it may in fact be less safe.  As comedian Lewis Black once put it in one of his stand-up routines, “over the last 25 years we’ve destroyed water.”

At a time when so many people don’t have access to clean drinking water, doesn’t it seem silly to pay manufacturers huge mark-ups for bottled water when we could just drink filtered tap water instead?  And if everyone stopped spending so much on bottled water, maybe we as Americans could contribute more to charitable organizations striving to help people in other countries get access to clean water.

For additional information visit: www.storyofbottledwater.org and  www.tappedthemovie.com.