Top Ten Reasons to Think Outside the Bottle

1. TO PROTECT YOUR HEALTH. Bottled water is less regulated than tap water. Public water systems are required to disclose the source and quality of their water and are accountable to the public. Often, water bottlers are not.^1,2

2. TO SAVE MONEY. Bottled water costs hundreds or thousands of times more than tap water, for a product which is essentially the same as the water coming from the tap.³

3. TO PROTECT OUR ENVIRONMENT. The extraction of bottled water takes a significant toll on the environment. And, more than nearly three quarters of all plastic bottles are burnt or tossed into landfills, polluting the air, overflowing landfills and contributing to water pollution.⁴

4. TO CHALLENGE MISLEADING ADVERTISING. Misleading bottled water marketing changes the way people think about water.⁵ Consumers are led to believe that bottled water is somehow better than the tap, when in reality up to 44% of bottled water is sourced from the tap.

5. TO PREVENT CORPORATE CONTROL OF WATER. Bottled water undermines support for public water systems and helps pave the way for corporate control of local water resources.

6. TO PRESERVE LOCAL CONTROL OF WATER RESOURCES. Water bottlers like Nestlé have a track record of running roughshod over communities’ concerns and damaging the environment when they extract water and build bottling plants to take local spring and groundwater.⁶

7. TO STRENGTHEN OUR PUBLIC WATER SYSTEMS. Bottled water isn’t a sustainable solution to water quality or scarcity problems; only strong public water systems can ensure reliable and equitable access to water into the future.⁷

8. TO REDUCE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINTS. Plastics used to make water bottles create pollution from beginning to end of the product cycle.⁸

• Fossil fuel used annually to create plastic bottles contributes to global warming

• Fossil fuel used to distribute plastic bottles around the world via trucks, planes and boats contributes to global warming. Public water systems ensure more energy-efficient access to water.

9. TO SUPPORT THE HUMAN RIGHT TO WATER. One in six people on earth don’t have access to enough water.⁹ In the face of this crisis, corporations are turning water into a profit driven commodity. Show your support for the human right to water by challenging the bottled water industry’s corporate control of our water.

10. IT JUST MAKES SENSE. Alternatives to bottled water - like turning on the tap- are cheaper, healthier, and more sustainable.

¹ U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Bottled Water: FDA Safety and Consumer Protections Are Often Less

² Stringent Than Comparable EPA Protections for Tap Water,” (Publication No. GAO-09-610), June 2009, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09610.pdf (accessed September 15, 2011).

³ Erik Olson, “Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?,” Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), March 1999, http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/exesum.asp (accessed September 15, 2011).

⁴ The Pacific Institute, “Bottled Water,” http://www.pacinst.org/topics/water_and_sustainability/bottled_water/ (accessed September 19, 2011)., Erik Olson, “Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?,” Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), March 1999, http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/exesum.asp (accessed September 15, 2011).

⁵ American Chemistry Council and Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers, “2009 United States National Post-Consumer Plastics Bottle Recycling Report,” 2010, http://www.americanchemistry.com/Media/PressReleasesTranscripts/RelatedP... (accessed September 19, 2011).

⁶ Peter Gleick, Bottled & Sold, “Chapter 1: The War on Tap Water,” Island Press: 2010. For more details: http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/communities-think-outside-bottle

⁷ Corporate Accountability International, Tapping Congress to Get Off the Bottle, Jan 2011, http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/congressoffthebottle (accessed Sept 23, 2011).

⁸ Peter Gleick and H. S. Cooley, “Energy implications of bottled water,” Environmental Research Letters, February 19, 2009, http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/4/1/014009/fulltext (accessed September 16, 2011).

⁹ UN Water, “Statistics: Graphs & Maps, Drinking Water and Sanitation,” http://www.unwater.org/statistics_san.html (accessed September 19, 2011).