Choosing green

It is often said that water will be the defining issue of the 21st century.
We are already beginning to see the signs. It is imperative that we reconcile our demand for pure water with the urgent necessity of treading lightly on the environment. Fortunately, this is actually among the easier problems in the world to solve.

The demand for bottled water is outstripping recycling capacity. Year by year an ever smaller proportion of plastic bottles is recycled – from 2 out of 5 in the mid ‘90s, to only 1 out of 7 today. Some 70 million bottles of water are consumed in America every day – and every day more than 60 million of these plastic bottles are discarded, not recycled. (Source: Container Recycling Institute)

Water filtration is, frankly, a no-brainer. With the right equipment in place, you can assure water quality that is equal or better than bottled, with greater convenience, at a fraction of the cost – and eliminate the bottle. You can also have filtered water where bottles can’t reach: in the shower, the baby’s bath, and for all food-prep.

The demand for pure drinking water is universal and accelerating.
Bottled water is nearly as popular in poor communities as in affluent ones. Trying to convince people to turn back to consuming raw tap water is useless. After The New York Times editorialized for a third time during the summer of 2007, pleading that tap water was perfectly good, they were compelled to acknowledge that, in fact, all of their employees in their new headquarters were drinking filtered water. Some weeks later, they published an op-ed piece recommending widespread implementation of “point-of-use” filtration, with the goal of separating consumable water from general purpose water.

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