• American tap water is among the safest in the world.
• As much as 40% of the bottled water sold in the U.S. is just filtered tap water anyway. Be sure to check the label and look for “from a municipal source” or “community water system”, which just means it is tap water.
• By drinking tap water, you can avoid the fertilizer, pharmaceuticals, disinfectants, and other chemicals that studies have found in bottled water.
• Tap water costs about $0.002 per gallon compared to the $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon charge for bottled water. If the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.
• 88% of empty plastic water bottles in the United States are not recycled. The Container Recycling Institute says that plastic water bottles are disposed of (not recycled) at the rate of 30 million a day.
• Plastic bottles can leach chemicals into the water if left in the sun, heated up, or reused several times.
• Production of the plastic (PET or polyethylene) bottles to meet our demand for bottled water takes the equivalent of about 17.6 million barrels of oil (not including transportation costs). That equals the amount of oil required to fuel more than one million vehicles in the U.S. each year. Around the world, bottling water uses about 2.7 million tons of plastic…each year.
• Bottled water companies mislead communities into giving away their public water in exchange for dangerous jobs.
• It can take nearly 7 times the amount of water in the bottle to actually make the bottle itself.
• On a weekly basis, 37,800 18-wheelers are driving around the country delivering water.
• The EPA sets much more stringent quality standards for tap water than the FDA does for the bottled stuff.
• One out of 6 people in the world does not have safe drinking water, and about 3,000 children a day die from diseases caught from bad water…that we know of. This while Americans spend about $16 billion a year on bottled water.

Have you kicked the bottled water habit? We finally did a few years ago, when we started using reusable bottles and filtered tap water from our house. So what do you think? Think we can encourage more people to get rid of their bottled water?

Post from: The Good Human

12 Reasons To Stop Drinking Bottled Water.

You may also enjoy:

1. New York To Stop Buying Bottled Water For State Agencies.
2. Greenwash Of The Week: Arrowhead Bottled Water Packaging.
3. Do YOU Enjoy Drinking Bottled Water That Supports A Dictatorship?
4. Greenwash Of The Week: Earth Day & Coca-Cola.
5. Greenwash Of The Week: Fiji Bottled Water.

Not much irks me more than watching someone driving down the street in their car throwing trash out the window. We have kind of come to expect cigarette butts to be thrown out of the window, even though they contain mercury and arsenic and take up to 10 years to degrade, but I am talking about the people who throw soda cans, napkins, and fast food bags right out their window onto the street.

photo credit: richardmasoner

Just the other day, someone was pulling out of the grocery store parking lot ahead of me and threw a beer can out that almost hit my car. I tried to yell at him but of course he just gave me the finger, so I stopped and got out and put it in the trash can. I cannot clean up after everyone – but why would someone want to throw trash on the ground around their own town?

photo credit: seadipper

It’s like some people have stopped taking any pride whatsoever in their communities. Between trash on the streets, the giant billboards, the neon signs, and the parking lots the size of small towns, some people have seemingly stopped caring about what their surroundings look like. Separate from even the environmental impact of trash flowing into the sewers, being absorbed into underground aquifers, or ending up in the ocean – do you really want to look at trash on your streets and in your alleys? Has it really gotten that bad that a bunch of people can ruin it for all of us?

photo credit: robinsan

We have to clean up after ourselves and other people – it’s become pretty obvious that too many people think that throwing their trash on the street is A-OK, but it’s not with me. Trash on the street is not just ugly, it also is terrible for the earth because of what the trash is made of and where it is going to end up. It doesn’t just disappear into thin air! Items such as diapers take up to 500 years to degrade and plastic bags end up in the ocean creating a floating island bigger than Texas. Are we truly OK with that? I’m not, as I don’t want to look at it and I don’t want to have to deal with the repercussions later on down the line. So if you see some trash on the ground, do us all a favor – pick it up and put it in a trash bin. Even if everyone just picks up a tiny little bit, it will add up. Little things do matter, and never forget that. Small changes can make a big difference.

Post from: The Good Human

Even If It Didn’t Matter, Why Would Anyone Choose To Litter?

You may also enjoy:

1. Canceling Trash Pickup Will Remind Me Of How Much Trash We Dispose Of.
2. Greenwash Of The Week: Fiji Bottled Water.
3. Blog Action Day ‘09 – Thoughts On Climate Change.
4. Do One Thing: Avoid Using The Toilet As A Trash Can.
5. We Must Stop Living Throw-Away Lives.

Convinced yet? Great! So now I have convinced you that you don’t want to buy the toxic pesticide versions, but you want to know which fruits and vegetables should be bought only organic and which ones it is safer to skimp on, right? Well, if you can pick and choose your organics, there are definitely fruits and veggies that either require less pesticide or absorb less of it, so let’s take a look.

The following fruits and vegetables tend to be higher in either pesticide use and/or absorption:

• Peaches
• Pears
• Green Beans
• Apples
• Squash
• Strawberries
• Raspberries
• Spinach
• Potatoes
• Tomatoes

The following fruits and vegetables tend to have less pesticides in them:

• Pineapples
• Mangoes
• Avocado
• Bananas
• Cauliflower
• Watermelon
• Kiwi Fruit
• Brussels Sprouts
• Eggplant
• Blueberries
• Radishes
• Onions
• Grapefruit

Even with washing and peeling, you cannot get rid of pesticides in your fruits and vegetables. And besides, with peeling you might be losing a lot of the good nutrients. So when you can, choose the organic version of your produce just to be on the safe side. But when you cannot, at least keep in mind which products contain less pesticides and might be safer for you to eat!

Photo by by SqueakyMarmot

Post from: The Good Human

Which Fruits & Vegetables You Should Be Buying Organic.

You may also enjoy:

1. To Organic Or Not To Organic – It’s An Obvious Choice.
2. Organic Is Just Another Word For “Old-Fashioned”.
3. Do One Thing: Buy Organic, Free-Trade Coffee.
4. EarthTalk: Backyard (Organic) Vegetable Gardening In Small Spaces.
5. Just Because It Was OK In The Past Does Not Mean That It Still Is.

I really enjoy my things, don’t get me wrong. And I used to have much more of them and like them even more! But over the last couple of years I have stopped seeing any real importance in most of it, instead trying to focus more on our lifestyle and what we do in our spare time. I have now gone without a car for 1.5 years, which is something I never thought I would do. Sure, it’s a pain sometimes – but not as much of a pain as having another car payment, another insurance payment, another thing to maintain. I am sure I will have to get one someday soon when we move out of the center of town, but for now I am OK with being carless, even in this rural area. Not many people think they can live without a car, but it is easier than you think it is – especially in a big city. But this is just one example of choosing need over want…I would love to have a nice new car. But I don’t need one, so I go without.

I used to think I needed to make a ton of money to be happy, but have slowly changed my thinking so that money is not what is important – it’s what I do with what I have that is important. I don’t care to make a million dollars a year as all it will do is buy me more stuff. I just want to be comfortable; that is all. I have a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food in my pantry, a car to ride around in, my health (now, finally), a loving wife, 1 television, 1 DVD player, a computer to do my work on, and enough money in the bank to live a comfortable (but not extravagant) life. What more does one really need? Not much really – and that’s the difference between need and want. There are lots of things I could convince myself that I want, but very few of them are actual needs. It took me a while to get to this point, and I am still not 100% innocent of “wanting” things I don’t need. But I think more and more people will start thinking like this as concern for our surroundings grows, and that’s a good thing.

What do you go without even if you have the means to have it? What choices have you made in your life that have redefined need vs. want?

Post from: The Good Human

Redefining Need In The Age Of Conservation.

You may also enjoy:

1. Book Review & Giveaway-Revolution in a Bottle: How TerraCycle Is Redefining Green Business.
2. Are We Capable Of Fixing The Mess We’ve Created On Our Planet?
3. Announcing The Winner Of Revolution in a Bottle: How TerraCycle Is Redefining Green Business.
4. Saving Money On Gas Is Not A Good Reason To Pay Extra For Hybrids
5. Responsible Stewardship Is About More Than Just The “Green”.