The Story Of Bottled Water Encourages Filtering Water At Home

The Story of Bottled Water is a short film by Anne Leonard that she released Thursday, which was World Water Day. Leonard, with the help of The Story of Bottled Water, is showing individuals how corporations are manipulating Americans to spend additional cash on half a billion bottles of water each week though just about every single person in this country can get it for free. "Purified" bottled water has become a $ 5 billion-a-year industry within the U.S. and ironically threatens public health and the environment.

World Water Day
According to an article on HuffingtonPost.com, Anne Leonard said she chose World Water Day to release The Story of Bottled Water because it is:"a good day to pause and consider the insanity of a global economy where 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water while other people spend billions on a bottled product that's no cleaner, harms people and the environment and costs up to 2,000 times the price of tap water."Leonard, in the Story of Bottled Water, compares spending money on bottle water to purchasing a shrink-wrapped sandwich made by unknown hands costing $ 10,000. She blames multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns commissioned by industrial giants like Coca Cola and Pepsi and Nestle to make Americans afraid to drink tap water.

Toxic chemicals in bottled water
The Story of Bottled Water points out that while people may think they're drinking purified water, it is often no safer than the water coming from the tap. It also could be less safe. What can leach to the water inside are the toxic chemicals from the plastic within the bottle.A report on mindfully.org states that Water bottles are made from various plastics, including Bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical that leaches into the water within the bottles to some degree. Bisphenal-A, it turns out, is a hormone disruptor that mimics estrogen and is linked to early onset puberty, declining sperm counts, obesity and breast and prostate cancer. In Los Angeles, a billion-dollar class action suit was filed in March 2007 against five leading manufacturers of baby bottles containing Bisphenal-A.

Filtered water at home
Leonard reveals that bottled water costs up to 2,000 times a lot more than tap water, yet nearly 50 percent of bottled water is simply filtered tap water. Consumers can filter water at home with products costing anywhere from $ 15 to $ 120. The Story of Bottled Water lists many other facts about bottled water that Leonard calls "inconvenient truths:

• Bottled water is subject to fewer health regulations than tap water.
• Municipalities often need money loans to cover more than the $70 million it costs to landfill water bottles alone each year, according to Corporate Accountability International.
• Making the plastic water bottles used in the U.S. takes enough oil and energy to fuel a million cars, not including the fuel required to transport the bottles from the factory.

Use metal to bottle waterThe Story of Bottled Water shows a bright side to its argument, however.Leonard states that fewer individuals are spending cash now on bottled water - sales are showing a slight decline for the very first time ever in 2009. More consumers choose to filter water at home, pass on bottled