Water quality concerns? Think filters, not bottles!

The Toxic Waters series continues to raise serious questions about water quality in the USA.  Elevating the issue to the forefront of the national news has lent momentum to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s stated commitment to improve drinking water quality standards and enforcement.   

I look at it as another call to action to protect our watersheds, lobby for enforcement of our existing clean water regulations, and support upgrades to our water and sewer infrastructure.  It matters what you throw on the ground, in the sewer, and on your lawn.  Whatever you put down could ultimately end up in your drinking water source and add to the cost of your water treatment.  We need to be willing to pay more for our tap water in order to assure that it’s clean.  It’ll still be a bargain at prices 100s of times cheaper than bottled water.  Let’s not give up and rely on bottled water which has already been shown to wasteful - that’s not a sustainable option.   And don’t forget that you don’t know what’s in bottled water either.

The good news is that 87% of the people in the USA have clean drinking water.   Links to find out about your own water quality and water filtration options are provided in the New York Times article, “Is Your Water Safe“.  The small percentage of people whose drinking water doesn’t consistently meet EPA standards should definitely consider home water filtration – it’s the greenest and most economical option.

Back2Tap Honored with Governor’s Environmental Excellence Award

Back2Tap Team honored by Governors Florio and Corzine

The four Back2Tap co-founders travelled down to Princeton to be honored at the Governor’s Environmental Excellence Awards last night.  The event took place at the gorgeous old mansion, Drumthwacket, which was all decked out for the holidays.  Hosting the event, Governor Corzine joked that he had spent the entire weekend decorating the house for us.  He got more laughs when he suggested that maybe he should look into this type of work since he’ll be out of a job soon. 

This year marked the 10^th anniversary of the awards program which was established to recognize businesses, individuals, municipalities, and institutions for outstanding environmental performance in the state of New Jersey.  Acting Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner, Mark Mauriello, expressed gratitude for all of the good work that is done outside of his state agency and commented that each year the competition for the awards has gotten more competitive.  The DEP received 52 award applications this year – 15 in our category, Sustainable and Healthy Communities. 

Ex-Governor Jim Florio, was also on hand to honor the award recipients.  We were reminded of how far the state has come since the 80s when medical waste frequently washed up on the Jersey shore causing beaches to be closed half the summer.  New Jersey has morphed itself into a national environmental leader as evidenced by its strong commitment to issues such as storm water management and climate change.  Back2Tap is proud to contribute its part to the new green image of the Garden State.

Yum!

Back2Tap poster session display at Award Reception

Bottled water biz banking on tap water demise

“The bottled-water industry isn’t just seizing an opportunity — it is banking on the decline of our water infrastructure as key to their successful business model” according to an editorial by Patti Lynn.   Lynn further quotes Nestlé Waters North America CEO Kim Jeffery as saying “We believe the tap infrastructure in the U.S. will continue to decline. People will turn to filtration and bottled water for pure-water needs.”

Is this the handwriting on the wall?  I’m sure that the CEO of Nestle is a smart business person, and I’m afraid this might be a pretty safe bet in spite of the recent decline in bottled water consumption reported earlier this year.  Clearly, there is a lot more work for Back2Tap and other organizations like ours to do.  We will all need to do more than raise awareness and convert people to tap – we will also have to convince people to actively lobby for watershed protection and improvements to their water infrastructure.

Drinking bottled water is dangerous to the health of your watershed!

Last month I got up early and drove into the heart of the Great Swamp watershed, near George Washington’s historic Jockey Hollow encampment in New Jersey to give a breakfast talk to the Great Swamp Watershed Association. I enjoyed doing this because it reminds me why I am working so hard to spread the Back2Tap message. For me, the Back2Tap movement is not only about reducing the waste associated with bottled water– it is also about reconnecting people with the land around them, their watershed.

What does bottled water have to do with the health of your watershed? Everything! If you drink bottled water, then you don’t have to give thought to the quality of your tap water, and then you won’t necessarily care about where it comes from – your watershed. People who rely on tap water are interested in knowing about its source and about how to protect it for the sake of their health and their pocketbooks.

So drinking tap water connects you to your watershed in a very personal way. Watershed stewardship becomes a cause you need to support. This could entail supporting preservation of open space, limiting the application of fertilizer and pesticides that run off into local water bodies, stabilizing slopes so that erosion doesn’t wash silt into water bodies, and supporting your local watershed association.

Conversely, bottled water disconnects you from your local environment. Extracting large quantities of water from remote watersheds to meet the bottled water demand around the United States is a recipe for local disasters. Spring water, usually from small rural locales, is often extracted at unsustainable rates. This lowers water levels in nearby wells and water bodies. Not to mention the nuisance of having water tanker trucks rumble through these small towns 24-7. Make no mistake, collecting and bottling water in one watershed and transporting it to another is hugely wasteful and inefficient compared to filling up at the tap.

Many people ask me “what exit?” when they find out I am from New Jersey. I am lucky to live in Chatham at the edge of the Great Swamp, just 25 miles west of Manhattan. Supplying drinking water for over 2 million people, this watershed is over 55 square miles and includes parts of ten towns. Way back, swamps like this one were viewed as wasted space so they were often utilized as dump sites for municipal and industrial waste. In 1960 the Port Authority of NY and NJ proposed filling it in and making it into the fourth regional airport in the New York metropolitan area. Luckily, people spoke up to save the swamp and the surrounding towns from this devastation. Over 7500 acres have been preserved, mostly in a Federal Wildlife Refuge where over 1000 species (26 endangered) are protected. The Great Swamp Watershed Association works to preserve more land and to raise awareness about the importance of caring for this valuable natural habitat and drinking water source.

Needless to say, I came away from my breakfast meeting at the Great Swamp Watershed Association reminded of the real value our Back2Tap movement offers – raising awareness about our drinking water choices and how that choice affects the health of our watershed, other people’s watersheds and indeed our entire planet.

All reusable metal bottles are not created equal

Reusable metal water bottles are popping up for sale all over the place these days. At the Go Green Festival in New York City last April, I spotted a stainless steel bottle for $27. At local grocery stores I’ve seen metal bottles for just $10. Custom logoed bottles can cost anywhere between $3.00 and $13.00. So what’s the difference? It turns out, plenty.

I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying: you get what you pay for.  There are some serious quality issues with the cheap metal bottles – we know because we tested lots of them in the process of choosing a bottle for Back2Tap. We encountered leaking caps, paint that literally peeled off after a few weeks, logos that were printed poorly and faded quickly, thin walls that dented very easily, and poor polishing/finishing on the bottle.

Paint peeling off a cheap bottle.

Comparison of damage caused by dropping onto pavement when full.

Then there’s the question of what the bottles are made of – a cheap bottle may not be made of food grade materials. If you choose stainless steel rather than aluminum, you won’t have to worry about a cheap liner that may allow unwanted constituents to leach into your beverage. Back2Tap bottles are 0.5mm thick, printed with safe and resilient paints in the USA, and are tested to ensure that they comply with FDA and ASTM standards.

An acquaintance of mine sheepishly admitted to me recently that she had supplied her whole swim team with cheap stainless steel bottles last winter, and now regrets it. The bottles are so junky no one wants to use them anymore! At the Watchung Hills Green Day event in October, a customer who bought a blank bottle at our exhibit table admitted that she had just purchased a cheaper bottle at another table. She bought it solely to support the soccer team even though she knew she would never actually use such a poor quality product.

These two stories highlight the main reason Back2Tap doesn’t offer cheap bottles – and we have considered doing so, believe me! Plenty of suppliers have contacted us hawking their wares. Low quality bottles just don’t perform well and don’t last so they are not durable and useful, key requirements for sustainable products. Back2Tap doesn’t want to be fostering a throw away mentality by selling cheap bottles because that is exactly what we are trying to combat. We hope that schools selling Back2Tap bottles for a fundraiser do so with the understanding that they are promoting sustainability and environmental stewardship as well as raising funds.

In sum, there are numerous significant differences between cheap, low quality bottles and better more expensive bottles. If you buy an inferior bottle that doesn’t last or doesn’t get used, your effort to be “greener” or live more sustainably will have failed – so don’t even bother!  A good reusable bottle can save you hundreds of dollars over its lifetime so it is worth investing in a high quality bottle that you will enjoy using every day.

Rutgers Preparatory School Launches Graduates to a Sustainable Future

Last June, math teacher and director of sustainability Kevin Merges arranged for the seniors at Rutgers Preparatory School in Somerset, New Jersey to get a surprise under their chairs at

Sustainable Future bottles.

their graduation ceremony.  Seniors quenched their thirst from reusable bottles filled with tap water instead of bottled water during the ceremony.   Merges noticed in prior years that dozens of water bottles were only partially empty.  Mary Ganzenmuller, Vice President of the Board of Trustee worked with Merges to find this sustainable solution for the event.   Provided by Back2Tap, the stainless steel bottles were customized with the school logo and the words: Rutgers Preparatory School – A Sustainable Future.  According to Merges, the students were thrilled with their reusable bottles and plan to carry them proudly as they go forth toward their sustainable futures.

Seniors with their reusable bottles.Sustainable Future bottles.

Bottle-less Coolers Encourage Students to Drink More Water and Create Less Waste!

It always feels good when a Back2Tap campaign at a school goes right. I was so psyched to hear that the reusable bottles and bottle-less water coolers were well received by the K-12 students at Lincoln – Hubbard School in Summit, NJ. So well, in fact, the students are lining up in the hallway to fill up their custom reusable bottles from Back2Tap. The kids say that they love the tap water because it is so cold and refreshing.

students refilling their reusable water bottles

Bottle-less coolers are tied directly into the water line and provide cold, filtered tap water without the waste, expense and exposure to plastics found with traditional water coolers with the 5 gallon jugs that have to be delivered. Although Back2Tap does not sell bottle-less water coolers, we can recommend a manufacturer. Lincoln – Hubbard was able to use the profits from their stainless steel bottle fundraiser toward the purchase of the coolers. Best of all, this is one green initiative that will save the school money and the parents money while benefitting students health and ability to learn.

Environmental Commission Makes Big Splash Giving 1000 Reusable Bottles to Schools!

It was a true pleasure to get a phone call from Susan Murray, parent and owner of Waste Not Solutions of Little Silver, NJ. She described a community that wanted to take a proactive step and invest some of its precious Environmental Commission dollars in the community’s children and schools.

Led by Rosemary Brewer, the Little Silver Environmental Commission graciously donated 1000 custom, stainless steel water bottles to the students and staff at Point Road and Markham Place schools in New Jersey. The commission’s goal was to help students reduce the number of disposable plastic water bottles they use and to make a positive impact on the environment.

Students enjoying Back2Tap reusable bottles

Check out our cool bottles!

Back2Tap reusable stainless steel bottles

The school created additional enthusiasm for the program by holding a logo design contest for the students. The winner was rewarded with their logo on the schools’ bottles. The result is a fantastic graphic. Bravo Little Silver!

Back2Tap reusable steel bottles

Back2Tap reusable stainless steel bottles

Reusable bottles in schools reduce flu

What do reusable bottles have to do with the flu? These days, everything seems to be peripherally related to flu, but aside from that, a Baxter Bulletin article yesterday reports that one principal is attributing low absenteeism rates with the use of reusable bottles.

Principal Randi Connior of Yellville-Summit Elementary in Arkansas noted that only 4% of her students were absent on Tuesday. Many districts are reporting absentee rates of 14-20% and higher. Every student at her elementary school has a reusable water bottle so students don’t have to use the water fountains in the hallways. “If you’ve ever watched kids drink from a school fountain,” she said, “you’ll usually see them sucking on it.” Students have been issued a reusable water bottle every year since principal Connior noticed a drop in absenteeism during a boil-water advisory when the water fountains were not being used.

When I searched “school water fountain hygiene” on-line, I found out that there are plenty of schools who have zeroed in on water fountains as a likely culprit for spreading contagious disease. In Charlestown, West Virginia, some Kanawha elementary principals have called school health officials about banning water fountain use as a way to prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus according to a Charleston Gazette article.

In their guide to avoiding infections when returing to schools this fall, the National Jewish Health website explicitly warns: “Water fountains can be the enemy. Take a reusable water bottle to school, instead of using the school water fountain, which may become contaminated with germs, especially during cold and flu season.”

I’m heartened to find that the solution of choice is reusable bottles, a very eco-friendly response, rather bottled water with all its associated wastefulness. Custom reusable bottles are readily available for bulk purchase with a quick turnaround time from Back2Tap for any school or parent group who would like to take this step toward keeping children healthy as this perilous flu season gets underway.

EPA pledges to enforce the Clean Water Act

The future of tap water is looking better all the time. After decades of continually eroding enforcement of the Clean Water Act, the EPA is pledging to turn the agency around.  Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA announced that the EPA has drawn up an action plan that includes better enforcement, better oversight of states, and more transparency and accountability.  While development of this plan began in July 2009, the Toxic Waters series in the New York Times has certainly galvanized the public and congressional leaders in support of this effort.

This is fantastic news for anyone concerned about the quality of our drinking water. The last thing we want to do is end up relying on bottled water for drinking. While only a small percentage of households on public water systems receive water from systems that have experienced health-based violations, it is unacceptable that anyone in the USA should have unsafe tap water come out of their faucets at home on any occasion.