Imagine the world without anger, without greed. We have the power, the tools, the skills and the resources right now to build a peaceful world, where people live in harmony with the Earth and each other. This blog explores ways we are doing just that, one post, one change, one day at a time. Join me. Tell your stories. Ask for help. Spread your ideas for making the vision real and, well, ordinary.
Showing posts with label Story of Stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Story of Stuff. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Would you pay $10,000 for a sandwich?

Bonkers, right? Yet every time we buy a bottle of water, according to Story of Stuff legend Annie Leonard, we are paying 2000 times the cost of tap water. That's like paying $10,000 for a sandwich, she says.

What's worse, like as not, that bottled water is no more pure, perhaps less so, than the water from your tap. And taste? In taste tests, people almost always pick the tap water over the bottled.

Between 10 and 15 percent of the price of a bottle of water goes to cover advertising costs. We not only buy their myths, it turns out we pay extra for them.

Why do we buy bottled water, anyway?

The idea that bottled water not only tastes better but is safer to drink came from, (Guess who!), Madison Avenue. That's right. Leonard says these are just two of the myths we've been sold to get us to carry around our very own bah-bahs, sucking on them like babies everywhere we go. Not that drinking water isn't important to our health and well-being. Conventional wisdom has it that we need eight glasses of the pure, sparkling stuff every day.

Half a billion bottles a week in U.S. alone

But do we need to contribute half a billion bottles every week to the waste stream? That's the U.S. number--enough to circle the globe five times. Every. Single. Week. All plastic. (Reminder: Every piece of plastic ever manufactured exists today.)

Get the whole story here, in Leonard's inimitable style, sure to draw a belly laugh or two.



This is just one of the reasons I carry a refillable water bottle. It's a conscious choice, and it helps bring us just a little closer to a sustainable lifestyle, and a healthy planet, more like the world of Ordinary.

What do you think? Are you carrying your own reusable bottle these days? What other conscious choices are you making to assure we leave the Earth a little better than we found it?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.
All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.


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