Bottle Bill

While New York City has terrific drinking water, many of us still buy and drink bottled water. Some resourceful types carry around reusable containers and fill them with tap water, but many of us buy new bottles water at the store, often once a day or more. My colleague Eleanor Sterling, the Director of Graduate Studies for Columbia’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology and the Director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, is the curator of a wonderful exhibit at the Museum called, “Water: H20 = Life." According to the bottled-water facts and figures presented in that exhibit:

Worldwide, 2.7 million tons of plastic are used each year to make water bottles, but in the U.S., less than 20 percent of these bottles are recycled.

The total estimated energy needed to make, transport, and dispose of one bottle of water is equivalent to filling the same bottle one-quarter full of oil.  read more »

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