Water Bottle represents an industry that is far from helpful and deserves a second look by consumers

Water Bottle
Originally uploaded by Stefano A

Tapped, an excellent documentary hitting DVD this week, details, with grim thoroughness, the multiple overlapping evils of the bottled water industry, says NPR.org.

Basically, the film contends, the bottled water industry is an ecological and consumer nightmare from end to end.

Corporations like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle mine public water sources and sell it back to the public at criminal markup. (Forty percent of bottled water is just recycled tap water from municipal sources.)

Of course, all of this water has to be transported, processed, packaged and retailed – with attendant energy costs. Most of those plastic bottles end up in landfills, or the ocean. The statistics are dispiriting.

According to the film, Americans buy 29 billion single-serve bottles of water each year. About 20 percent are recycled. Transporting the water uses about 18 million gallons of oil.