Happy Be-lated Earth Day!

OH how could i forget! But really everyday should be Earth day!

So in honour of Earth day I would like to urge everyone to do SOMETHING to help out the earth. Pick up some garbage, start composting, have a meat free day (cow farms produce a huge amount of greenhouse gasses), take the transit, carpool, foot-it, plant a tree and just talk to others about how they can make a difference. Lets get some dialogue going.

here is a topic that you can talk about around the water cooler...
Inform people about bottled water. ITS A FARCE! DON"T BUY IT!

Bottled water, although often advertised as glacier or spring fresh is more often just reprocessed municipal water. Basically it is water transformed into... water! Advertising campaigns of bottled water use fear tactics to sell you their purified water, promising that their water is cleaner than tap water. This is just not true. Tap water must go through multiple purifying systems to make it suitable for human consumption and it is constantly tested and monitored. There is nothing wrong with your tap water. There is evidence that bottled water has contained such things as pesticides, arsenic, and mercury. Bottled water companies do not go through the same rigorous testing that municipal water does.

Have you ever heard the idea that you should drink at least 8 glasses of water a day? I thought this was true until I saw it in a bottled water add telling me that this product (aquafina) was a good way to reach that goal. Think about this, you pay much less for tap water than bottled water, but sadly the bottling companies pay even less for access to your municipal water. Why then is a bottle of water upwards of $2.00?
Bottled water is a lucrative business that tries to convince the consumer that bottled water is environmentally friendly and good for you. (Take the Healthy choice,as Culligan water says)

Bottle water companies are taking your water away from you and increasing the price drastically for the same water. Access to clean water should be a universal human right. Speaking of which, Coca-cola extracts about 1.5 million liters of water a day from groundwater in Planchimada, Kerala from which the local farmers and citizens use. Nestle is responsible for drying up the Magnesiana in Brazil.

The bottles themselves are a threat to our environment. The waste produced by the bottles is staggering and they are ending up in our landfills. Yes you can recycle the bottles, but why make them when they are not necessary in the first place? Recycling is not the end solution to the problem of excess waste, it is just one answer. Also the trucks needed to drive the product to the consumer are not environmentally friendly.

I was trying to find out the names of water bottling plants around Regina, I was told there are many, but I could not receive a list of them. I will keep trying.Be aware that there are companies bottling our municipal water.

Most of this information I gleaned from a book called "Inside the Bottle: An Expose of the Bottled water Industry" found at the RPL. If you Google Bottled Water, though you will find many sites dedicated to informing citizens about the Bottled Water Industry.

here are some to get you started
http://www.polarisinstitute.org
http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp