Bottled Water - Reducing Our Ecological Footprint.

Silent River Kung Fu is working towards becoming a greener school, by lessening our environmental impact. As most know, one of the things that we are trying to do is eliminate all use of plastic water bottles within the kwoon.

I decided that for my blog I would research the effects of bottled water on the environment, and teach myself something new in the process.

First let’s start off with this.

SIX FACTS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT BOTTLED WATER.

1. Tap water is just as safe as bottled water. In fact, the U.S government performs more vigorous tests on tap water than bottled water.

2. Purchasing bottle water is thousands of times more expensive than tap water. One-third of Canadians buy bottled water rather than drinking purified tap water.

3. Terephthalate (PET) is the most commonly used plastic for making water bottles. PET is derived from crude oil.

4. Just in the U.S., 1.5 MILLION barrels of oil are used each year for tasks such as (but not limited to) making PET, transporting bottles and powering water bottle factories.

5. 86% of plastic water bottles are not recycled.

6. About 40% of bottled water starts as tap water.


Bottled water is the top selling product in the beverage industry, but it’s also the worst for the environment. Each year, 2 million tones of plastic water bottles are put into landfills, drastically increasing the amount of time it takes to fill up a landfill. As well as, the recycling rate for these bottles is only around 27%. Scientist have proven that the best thing that you can do to reduce your ecological footprint is to stop buying bottled water completely.

Many resources are used to make, ship and recycle bottled water. In fact, if bottled water were eliminated, the oil that would have been used to make them would be enough to power 100,000 cars for a year. That is a lot!

There are many things that we can do to reduce this portion of our ecological footprint.

Stop purchasing the bottled water and use tap water. Or, if its taste you’re worried about, buy a drinking water filter to attach on the end of your tap.
Use a re – useable water bottle to put your water in. Even though we sometimes re use the plastic ones, resources were still wasted to make the bottle, and more will be used to recycle it.
I have a challenge for everyone that reads this blog. Go online to the following website, (http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators) (You have to click on Calgary for your location ) and calculate your ecological footprint. Then find out one thing that you can do to reduce it. Take action. We are aiming to be leaders through our actions, and what a better way to do it than to help the planet in the meantime. My footprint was 7.1, the Canadian average. But, I would need over 8 football fields of land to support all of the resources that I need to live. That’s huge! I’m going to take action by trying to carpool, walk, etc. to try and reduce the pollution that I put into the air.
What will you do?