Bottled Water

Two years ago, the Earth Policy Institute estimated that each gallon of bottled water costs $10 a gallon to go from the groundwater to your lips.

Each bottle of water kicks the environment twice, first with unnecessary plastic containers and then with the fuel that is burned to transport this heavy liquid load to your door, supermarket, or vending machine.

The cost is currently four times the cost of a gallon of regular gasoline.

This sham is so ridiculous that the Government Accountability Office reported this summer that the energy costs of delivering bottled water to a consumer in Los Angeles were 1,100 to 2,000 times more than the energy cost of tap water, depending on how far away the filled bottles traveled.

Worse yet, annual bottled-water consumption more than doubled between 1997 and 2007, from 13.4 gallons a person to 29.3 gallons.

In one of the more outrageous examples of bottled-water scamming, the Merced (Calif.) Sun-Star reported in June how the Safeway supermarket chain turns Merced city water into an enormous profit.

“In Safeway’s case,’’ the newspaper reported, “they pay more than $1,000 a month for more than a million gallons of water. The retail cost for that much-purified bottled water at Safeway is just under $3 million.’’

Yet Safeway spokeswoman Teena Massingill told the Sun-Star, “We are providing a product that did not exist previously.’’

Last I heard, water existed before bottles, and before Safeway.

From: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/08/25/bottled_water_scam_finally_feels_squeeze/