According to the L.A Times late last year, nearly 70 percent of Californians drink bottled water. And by the end of this year, bottled water will have moved past milk, coffee and beer to become the second most popular beverage behind soft drinks, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp.

I did write some time last year about the sheer insanity of transporting bottled water across the globe and apart from the trail of fossil fuels burned and greenhouse gases emitted, the most spectacular result is that manufacturing and transporting that 1-kg bottle uses 6.74 kg of water (7 times more than the content of the bottle!) So much for careless wastefulness, and if that does not convince you then BPA will.

University of Missouri-Columbia researcher Frederick vom Saal, a professor of reproductive biology and neurobiology, is quoted in Missouri Resources (Winter 2008, p. 15) that traces of Bisphenol-A have been found "in nearly every American tested for it and that tests on laboratory animals found it produces a long list of ailments."

Aluminum bottles are also a danger, as they require a special chemical coating that often peels off into the water you drink. That chemical? None other than our old fiend, bisphenol A. Bottled water's popularity is fueled in part by suspicions over the quality of tap water. Frankly, I think local authorities should blitz the media with a barrage of advertising spots on the true qualities of tap water.

Let me state a few known facts, taken from various Eco sites such as the Earth911.com, us.oneworld.net, commondreams.org, web.md.com, filterforgood.com, earthpolicy.org, and a host of others such as Grist, Greenpeace et all: the average price of a liter of bottled water varies from $1.50 to $2.50, more for luxury brands such as Fiji, which means that it is roughly 2,000 times more expensive than tap water (depending on your water rates).

The average person in the US spends $400 per year ($300 in the EU). The latest bottled water "census" tells us that 26,000,000,000 units are sold in the North America each year (I can't find reliable figures for the entire world and I'm certain that it would make our heads spin! Check this pdf for bottled water consumption country by country, from 1999 to 2004)

Of these 26,000,000,000 bottles, 86% find their way into landfills (and quite a fews get thrown into the sea). According to the Earth Policy Institute 1,500 bottles are discarded every effing second!

26,000,000,000 plastic bottles mean that it took 17,000,000 barrels of oil to produce, enough to power 100,000 automobiles for a year. 26,000,000,000 also means that at least 2,550,000 tons of carbon dioxide were emitted on top of other pollutants. Oh, and by the way, bottled water is not safer than tap water. You should read this article from the good folks at Food&WaterWatch.