Cost

Sudbury tap water costs .0007 cents a pint. Bottled water costs $1.00 a pint. For the price of a bottle of water, you can have 1,500 large glasses of Sudbury tap water.

It costs US cities and states at least $42 million a year to dispose of plastic water bottles. Discarded and recycled bottled water plastic adds 45 tons annually to Sudbury’s waste stream. And we have to clean up the rest from our conservation lands.

Almost half of bottled water is just municipal tap water anyway, including Coca Cola’s Dasani brand, Pepsi’s Aquafina brand, and Nestle’s Pure Life brand.

Why pay for a bottle of water when Sudbury tap water is readily available?

Oil & Water Resource Use

It takes three liters of water and one third of a liter of oil to produce one liter of bottled water.

The production and transport of bottled water in the United States alone necessitates the use of up to 54 million barrels of oil every year, and it can take more than 2,000 times more energy to produce and distribute bottled water than would be used if everyone chose tap water.

The equation speaks for itself - the sheer logic behind the production process for bottled water is shockingly inefficient.

Water Privatization

Extracting water from aquifers and springs can lower local water tables, reducing stream flow, depleting aquifers, draining wetlands and drying up wells.

Small towns from California to Maine have spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars to protect their local water resources from bottled water companies. Sterling, Massachusetts fended off Nestles’ bid to extract water from its reservoir in 2008.

When we choose not to drink bottled water, we are helping to keep water as a public resource.