Plastic H2O bottles? Pure waste. - Unsustainable Minute for 6.19.2009

In his essay, "Waste," author Wendell Berry states that waste is caused by "[A] symbiosis of an unlimited gree at the top and a lazy, passive, and self-indulgent consumptiveness at the bottom." In today's consumer culture, a lot of people have taken the plastic water bottle for granted without really considering its impacts on nature and on ourselves. Here are a few facts on the matter:

According to the Container Recycling Institute:

• There were 215 billion plastic, glass, and aluminum beverage bottles and cans sold in the U.S. 2006.
• 66% of recyclable containers were not recycled in 2004.
• In 2004, 41,000,000,000 gallons of bottled water were consumed worldwide. The bottles alone that contained this water consumed 47,000,000 gallons of oil. That equals 1,000,000,000 pounds of CO2 put into the atmosphere, further accelerating climate change.
• Buying bottled water costs you, the consumer, between 250 and 10,000 times more than it does from the tap.
  

According the Natural Resources Defense Council:

• Most tap water quality standards are more rigorous and stringent than those to which bottled water are. According to testimony to Congress, the EPA's standards are higher than the FDA's and the lack of strict regulation does little to ensure that microbes like E. coli are not present in bottled water.
  

If you live in central Pennsylvania, why are you drinking from a plastic water bottle?