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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.
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.
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- Paint peeling off a cheap bottle.
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- 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.
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.
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.
If you are following the series on Toxic Waters by Charles Duhigg in the New York Times, his latest article is more encouraging. A recent EPA news release says that the EPA is going to undertake a re-evaluation of its previous rulings on atrazine. This could lead to stricter regulations, ie. lower acceptable levels allowed in our tap water. Ah, this is what I was saying could happen if the issue was raised! I’m not sure if there is any connection between peoples reaction to the Toxic Water series and this EPA decision, but it certainly gives you reason to believe the EPA is listening.
When the Patriots Path Council called to invite Back2Tap to their Jamboree celebrating 100 years of Boy Scouts, I didn’t really know what to expect. Preparing for the “jambo,” I began to wonder whether any boys would visit a table presenting the evils of bottled water when they could be spear throwing, mountain boarding, bullwhip cracking, or watching an army tank run over a car.
In spite of having about 175 cool activities to choose from, a couple hundred of the 4300 scouts and leaders did find time to spend at the Back2Tap table this past Saturday. Every single boy and leader listened intently, asked questions, and seemed genuinely excited about our campaign for getting back to drinking tap water and using reusable bottles. This was definitely the best crowd I’ve ever worked with as an exhibitor. I also learned a lot – from the challenges of having private well water to the best type of carabiner.
Interestingly, even these outdoorsy community-minded folks who had reusable bottles clipped to their belts weren’t familiar with the astounding facts about bottled water waste. Many of them told us that if people knew about the:
• 140 million disposable bottles going to landfills everyday,
• 700 years it takes for plastic to decompose,
• 4 ounces of oil it takes to make each disposable bottle,
• 1000 times greater cost of bottled water, and
• more stringent regulatory oversight of tap water compared to bottled water,
they would be persuaded to drink tap water from reusable bottles instead of bottled water. Most people just don’t know about the hidden costs of their consumer choices. To illustrate these impacts, we had a sequencing activity where scouts put the 18 steps in the Life Cycle of a Disposable Plastic Water Bottle in order (see photo). Impacts on the environment were obvious at many steps in the Life Cycle. Before leaving, they were also able to take our Bottled Water IQ Test to see how much they had learned.
Obviously, there is a lot more work to do getting these facts and concepts out to people. Most of the scouts and scout leaders left our exhibit table eager to spread the Back2Tap message with the rest of their troop and with their communities. This is exactly the type of help the Back2Tap movement needs because it is not a message that large multi-national corporations with large advertising budgets is going to sponsor. It will take community leaders like scouts, teachers, PTO members, municipal volunteers, and green activists spreading the word, community by community. To find out how to help foster the Back2Tap movement, visit our community page.
Congratulations to the Patriots Path Council and the participating scout troops for organizing such an exciting and inspiring event. It was an honor to meet and talk with so many of you – thank you for sharing your opinions and suggestions with Back2Tap.
You can keep it simple and cheap. Forget all the powders, potions, and bottles of expensive sports drinks for your kids. Just send your children off to school and sports with plain old tap water in reusable stainless steel water bottles. According to Phys Ed: Are Sports Drinks Actually Good for Kids?, unless children will be exercising vigorously for more than 90 minutes, water is better for them. And outside of exercise, sports drinks are not a good choice – they are just expensive sugar water.
Most sports drinks don’t even come close to replacing the electrolytes you lose when you sweat a lot, so they aren’t doing what you think they are doing. If they had enough salt in them, you wouldn’t want to drink them!
For older children (10-12 and up) who are exercising hard for more than 90 minutes, dehydration is a concern and sports drinks are appropriate. Studies have shown that young athletes do drink significantly more water when it is flavored and almost twice as much when it contains electrolytes and carbohydrates, like a sports drink.
If you want to be green and frugal, check out this DIY sports drink recipe made with your very own tap water from “Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook,” 4th Edition:
Sports drink recipe from “Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook”
1/4 cup sugar (or stevia powder to be really healthy!)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup hot water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 1/2 cups cold waterIn a quart pitcher, dissolve the sugar and salt in the hot water. Add the remaining ingredients and the cold water. The drink contains about 50 calories and 110 mg of sodium per 8 ounces, approximately the same as for most sports drinks (unless you substituted stevia powder for the sugar).
So be green, be frugal, and be healthy, fill your reusable bottles with tap water, flavored if serious exercise awaits!
The New York Times series “Toxic Waters” written by Charles Duhigg presents a disturbing view of our drinking water quality in the USA. The first article about herbicides (atrazine in particular) points out that it is time to strengthen some of the federal drinking water standards in light of new research. You can read more about it in my earlier Earthsense blog entitled “Don’t give up on tap water.” The second article in this series is about industrial waste, particularly in the coal-mining region of West Virginia. Basically, Duhigg says the 1972 Clean Water Act was largely successful at stopping the rampant pollution of our rivers, lakes, and streams, but over the last 10 years it has not been well enforced by the EPA or states. Consequently, our water quality is going downhill again. His third article is about agricultural runoff which is a type of non-point source pollution (it doesn’t come out of a pipe). Most of this runoff is not regulated by the Federal government, and it is not well regulated by local governments. Disposing of huge quantities of manure by spraying it on nearby fields has led to bacteria and parasites in local water bodies and drinking water wells in heavily agricultural areas.
Before you panic and revert to bottled water, you might want to follow the advice of the New York Times on-line article “How safe is your tap water?“ First visit the EPA drinking water quality reports that are available on-line to check out the quality of water in your town. Then, find out the names of the polluters that are located near you, by visiting the interactive database of water pollution records for the United States that was amassed by The New York Times. If you are one of the small percentage of people who have impaired drinking water from your private well or your public water system, your next best step would be to use some sort water filtration at home while you lobby your legislators for cleaner water. Don’t assume that bottled water is any safer, by the way. It is regulated by the FDA, an even more poorly funded and staffed governmental agency.
There is a positive side to the story. The EPA reports that 92% of the population served by community water systems had no reported health-based violations. There’s also hope that investigative articles like these will pressure the EPA and states to improve enforcement of the Clean Water Act laws that were wisely enacted to protect us all those years ago. Finally, Lisa Jackson, the new head of EPA has acknowledged these problems and says she will address them. The more people who raise these issues with regulators and politicians, the better chance we have of achieving meaningful improvements so that everybody in the United States will be able to drink their tap water and enjoy recreation in our water bodies without fear of getting sick.
1 Billion. That is the number of disposable plastic bottles that could be kept out of landfills every year if just 10% of the students in the US, K-12, would switch to reusable bottles. This number is hard to believe and hard to visualize, but we’ve crunched the numbers and it’s true. The solution to this staggering amount of plastic waste is to reuse. By getting your children’s school to promote reusable bottles, you can help them “Join the Reusolution” and save that billion bottles.
Eliminating 10% of the disposable plastic bottles used by school children would also save 31 million gallons of oil, almost 400 million gallons of water, and 12 billion balloons worth (or 120 billion grams) of CO2 each year. The resources it takes to make these bottles is surprising, especially when you add them all up.
Collectively, parents would save over $25 million dollars in the first year by switching to tap water-based drinks from single serving drinks in disposable plastic bottles. This more than justifies the purchase of good quality reusable bottles.
To foster completely litter-less lunches, Back2Tap is offering reusable sandwich wraps and snack bags as well as custom-logoed stainless steel bottles for your school’s green fundraiser this year. Save money, save the planet - Join the Reusolution!
