Learn the Facts

Why is bottled water waste a concern? Here are just a few reasons...

• Making bottles to meet America's demand for bottled water uses more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year1. And that's not even including the oil used for transportation.
• The energy we waste using bottled water would be enough to power 190,000 homes2.
• Last year, the average American used 167 disposable water bottles, but only recycled 383.
• Americans used about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year. However, the U.S.'s recycling rate for plastic is only 23 percent, which means 38 billion water bottles - more than $1 billion worth of plastic - are wasted each year3.

Ditching bottled water keeps Mother Earth and your wallet green.

• One Brita pitcher filter can effectively replace as much as 300 standard 16.9-ounce bottles. So you can get great-tasting water without so much waste. Talk about refreshing.
• The average Brita pitcher filters 240 gallons of water a year for about 19 cents a day4. Put in perspective, to get the same amount of water from bottled water would require 1,818 16.9-ounce water bottles a year5 - at an average cost of a dollar a bottle, that's $4.98 a day6.
• For about $10 each, you can purchase a 16-ounce or 32-ounce Nalgene bottle, saving you hundreds of dollars a year on bottled water.
• Hydration at its best - carry the water you need and reduce your impact on the environment - one Nalgene bottle can last for decades, making it easy to stop buying single-serve bottled water to fulfill your everyday hydration needs.

Many people drink bottled water because they believe it to be of a higher quality, cleaner and better-tasting, but that's not necessarily true.

• In the United States, 24 percent of bottled water sold is either Pepsi's Aquafina (13 percent of the market) or Coke's Dasani (11 percent of the market). Both brands are bottled, purified municipal water3.
• If you don't like the taste of your tap water, try Brita. Nine out of 10 consumers say "Brita clearly tastes better," according to an in-home usage study. They preferred the taste of Brita water - filtered through pitchers - to tap.
• Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, told The New York Times that "there is no reason to believe that bottled water is safer than tap water."7
• In the U.S., public water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which requires multiple daily tests for bacteria and makes results available to the public. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates bottled water, only requires weekly testing and does not share its findings with the EPA or the public7.