America’s Obsession with Bottled Water
March 10th, 2008 | by Reid |I remember when bottled water became mainstream some ten years ago. I thought, “how silly - who would end up paying $3 at a ballpark for water?” Little did I know, bottled water would be akin to some health craze; where having one in your hand represented some type of low-calorie fitness attitude. It was sure healthier than drinking a 200 calorie soda. But, this has come at the expense of our environment. What has only recently come into the conversation on limiting production of bottled water is how wasteful it is to produce it: according to the Earth Policy Institute, “Just manufacturing the 29 billion plastic bottles used for water in the United States each year requires the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of crude oil.”
To put things into even more shocking terms, “the energy used for pumping and processing, transportation, and refrigeration, brings the annual fossil fuel footprint of bottled water consumption in the United States to over 50 million barrels of oil equivalent—enough to run 3 million cars for one year. If everyone drank as much bottled water as Americans do, the world would need the equivalent of more than 1 billion barrels of oil to produce close to 650 billion individual bottles.”
Unfortunately, I worry that the most recent AP Report that “There are Drugs in Drinking Water” will push this number even higher. I’m not entirely convinced that the fact there are extremely small bits of drugs in drinking water poses a health risk. Plus, it was from a study by the Associate Press, not a respected medical journal or institution. So I’m not going to change my habits based on the report, just yet.
Anyway, back to my point about the environmental impact of producing bottled water. The numbers are there and so are the facts. But, like any movement, there’s an artistic aspect, and the photography of Chris Jordan caught me eye. I was linked to his work from a post to an internal work mailing list, so I won’t take credit for discovering him myself. His most recent exhibit, Running the Numbers, provides some shocking images of how much waste is produced every second by Americans. Besides showing us what 2 million bottles of water looks like (what Americans use every five minutes), my ‘favorite’ images are of cell phones and prison uniforms. All of the images easily underscore problems with our environment and justice system and can hopefully serve as a catalyst for change. What do you all think? Did any image catch your eye?
