• Editor’s Note: Kane County Recycling Coordinator Jennifer Jarland is herself one of Kane County’s great natural resources. In addition to coordinating the county’s super-popular recycling events and a handful of the most-read pages on the Kane County website, Jarland is a board member of the Illinois Recycling Association, and is a founding member of the Illinois Food Scrap Coalition.
• (SIDE NOTE TO LOCAL MEDIA: Please feel free to recycle this article.)

In the midst of festival season, I see so many water bottle littering the streets and parks, stuffed to overflowing in trash cans and recycling cans throughout the city. I look down at my ever-present refillable metal water bottle and wonder, why don’t more people use refillable bottles? Convenience maybe, but it is also possibly due to a misconception that bottled water is better than tap water. Healthier somehow, cleaner, more pure than city water. But it’s not.

If you get a chance, check out this article and video from the storyofstuff.org. It does a great job of telling the story of bottled water and “Fiji” water in particular.

The following is an excerpt from a report called, Take Back the Tap: Why Choosing Tap Water over Bottled Water is Better for Your Health, Your Pocketbook, and the Environment, by the Food & Water Watch.

“American consumers drink more bottled water every year, in part because they think it is somehow safer or better than tap water. They collectively spend hundreds or thousands of dollars more per gallon for water in a plastic bottle than they would for the H20 flowing from their taps.

“Rather than buying into this myth of purity in a bottle, consumers should drink from the tap. Bottled water generally is no cleaner, or safer, or healthier than tap water. In fact, the federal government requires far more rigorous and frequent safety testing and monitoring of municipal drinking water.

“In some cases, beverage companies use misleading labels, including marketing bottled tap water as spring water. In fact, as much as 40 percent of bottled water is bottled tap water. Furthermore, the production of bottled water causes many equity, public health, and environmental problems. The big beverage companies often take water from municipal or underground sources that local people depend on for drinking water.

“Producing the plastic bottles uses energy and emits toxic chemicals. Transporting the bottled water across hundreds or thousands of miles spews carbon dioxide into the air, complicating our efforts to combat global climate change. And in the end, empty bottles are piling up in landfills.”

This report can be viewed or downloaded at www.foodandwaterwatch.org.

Beyond the water inside, we also need to think about the container. Plastic water bottles are recyclable, but only if placed in a recycling bin, and they often aren’t. So use a reusable metal drink bottle if possible and fill it with fresh, clean, and regulated city tap water. Avoid reusing plastic containers as they can leach chemicals into the water, especially if exposed to heat.

By the way, if you do drink bottled water, soda, or other drinks in plastic bottles, please place the lid back on the empty bottle for recycling. That goes for plastic jars or jugs with plastic lids, too.

More recycling information can be found at www.countyofkane.org/recycling.

• Questions? Contact Kane County Recycling Coordinator Jennifer Jarland at 630-208-3841 or recycle@countyofkane.org

Get the Facts

• Bottled water is not safer than tap water.
• Bottled water creates mountains of garbage and causes other major environmental problems.
• Bottled water is thousands of times more expensive than tap water.
• Bottled water companies mislead communities into giving away their public water in exchange for dangerous jobs.

Image Source: The source material for the chart was obtained from the University of Iowa Water Confidence Report.