1. Create your own “pure” water by investing in an at-home water filtration system. Get a water-quality report from your municipality to see if there are any contaminants you need to be aware of (usually only an issue in rural settings) and to find out whether you need a point-of-entry unit that will filter all water before it’s distributed through your house, or a smaller unit that treats water once it’s out of the faucet.

2. Pick up a stainless-steel water bottle to carry that tap water in. With the safety of reusable plastic bottles in question for containing bisphenol A (BPA), a suspected hormone disruptor and carcinogen, it’s time to ditch that “indestructible” Nalgene bottle in favour of a shiny, metal version. Bring it everywhere.

3. Pass on overpriced bottled water when you’re out to eat and request a glass of free ice water instead. No need to be afraid: Canadian tap water is more rigorously screened than the bottled stuff.

4. Lobby to make tap water more convenient. Contact your city council and ask to have more drinking fountains and water spigots installed around town.

5. Create a bottled-water-free bubble at your school or office. On World Water Day in March, 2008, the Polaris Institute launched a campaign to discourage bottled water use on Canadian campuses in an attempt to reject the commodification of one of the world’s most precious resources. Visit PolarisInstitute.org for more details and talk to your powers above to create your own tap-water-only zone.

6. Donate your autograph to the cause. Head over to Article31.org and sign a petition asking the United Nations to declare access to potable water a human right.

7. Do the math. A litre of tap water in most Canadian municipalities costs less than a tenth of a cent, whereas a litre of bottled water can cost $1 or more. The switch should be a no-brainer.

[On Wednesday, we introduced the first in our new WTF/FTW series of blog posts. Today we bring you the flipside of Wednesday WTF (bad/crazy/stupid news): Friday FTW (good/awesome/fun news).]

U.S. website Tappening, a project and blog advocating that you ditch bottled water and drink from the tap like a normal person, launched a separate microsite this week, StartALie.com. Operating on the notion that if the bottled water industry lies about its product all the time — that bottled water is healthier, purer, less contaminated, environmentally friendly, etc — StartALie fires back with its own lies about the industry, made up by readers. They include:

• 32% of profits from bottle water are used to support Eastern European art thieves.
• Studies show bottled water causes tooth decay.
• Prolonged consumption of bottled water can cause erectile dysfunction.
• Bottled water caused the mortgage crisis.
• Bottled water creates inane web site posts!

That last one proves to be true; StartALie is now filled with Russian spam, juvenile poop jokes, and assorted other interwebs jetsam. But the project is attention-grabbing and fun, with less of the usual tut-tutting that accompanies many of these awareness-raising campaigns. Tappening’s blog aggregates news and opinion about tap water vs. bottled water, and they sell some smart-looking BPA-free bottles to carry your own tap water wherever you go.

More recyclable, sure, but that doesn't make it "green"

The Claim:

Nestlé Waters Canada says its bottled water is a “healthy, eco-friendly choice” and, feeling so confident about this claim, ran an ad in the October 20, 2008, issue of the Globe and Mail stating that its “bottled water is the most environmentally responsible consumer product in the world.” [See the ad here — PDF, 700kb]

The Investigation:

At first glance, there might be something to Nestlé Waters Canada’s claim: It’s made major cuts to its material usage—30 percent less plastic, 20 percent fewer paper labels, 65 percent less corrugate—and plans to make further reductions this year. The company claims to have the “lightest plastic beverage container in the industry,” says John Challinor, director of corporate affairs. And Nestlé Waters Canada and its partners fund nearly 50 percent of Canada’s recycling programs.

But recycling still produces five to 10 percent of the energy used to make new plastic. And due to health regulations, these bottles can only be recycled as non-food products such as carpets, fleece shirts, and blue boxes, rather than as new beverage bottles. Then there’s the fact that one plastic bottle takes anywhere from 450 to 1,000 years to decompose in a landfill. According to Nestlé Waters’ own claims, in Ontario that’s where about 40 percent of water bottles end up.

“Nestlé is trying to spin the bottle by declaring it eco-friendly, when the fact of the matter is there is no green solution for bottled water” says Joe Cressy of the Polaris Institute. Frustrated, his group teamed up with the Council of Canadians, Ecojustice and others to file a complaint with Advertising Standards Canada against Nestlé’s Globe ad.

The Verdict:

That complaint was dismissed for violation of confidentiality after the groups sent out a press release in December 2008, but environmentalists don’t need to hear ASC’s opinion to reject Nestlé’s claims. Says Meera Karunananthan, national water campaigner for the Council of Canadians, “When the carbon footprint of drinking out of your tap is zero, you can’t deny that the environmental impact of bottled water is more harmful.”