If you were at POA weekend this year, you may have seen all of the Environmental Program Board’s fantastic displays about rethinking our use of single use bottles, particularly those which contain bottled water. We concur, and we would like to thank Ginny Moser for bringing this to everyone’s attention!
There are a lot of reasons bringing bottled water to Dewees is unnecessary… we have safe drinking water, there is a HUGE amount of embedded energy in the bottle and the water, and it takes up space on the ferry. In addition, bottles make their way into the most unfortunate places.
At our house, we’ll admit to not always loving the taste of the water, which is perfectly safe to drink. Rather than bring bottled water, we keep a large dispenser with refillable 3 gallon bottle on the counter, and head over to the Landings Building when we need a refill from the R-O filter dispenser there. We even put these in our rental houses… nothing is more discouraging than having to hand carry your luggage onto the ferry because somebody uses a whole cart for 12 oz. bottles of water. 
When I was doing our turtle walk last week, we found lots of old water bottles in the rack line, and I remember a dreadful post about the albatross who collect bottle tops and feed them to chicks, who starve because all they eat is garbage.
RETHINK WHAT YOU DRINK
- 40% OF ALL BOTTLED WATER COMES FROM MUNICIPAL SOURCES
- OF 188 BRANDS ONLY 2 REPORTED THEIR WATER SOURCE
- 70% OF BOTTLED WATER NEVER CROSSES STATE LINES FOR SALE MAKING IT EXEMPT FROM FDA OVERSIGHT
- BOTTLED WATER REQUIRES 2,000 TIMES MORE ENERGY TO PRODUCE THAN TAP WATER
- 700 YEARS WILL PASS BEFORE A PLASTIC BOTTLE BEGINS TO DECOMPOSE
- 80% OF PLASTIC BOTTLES ARE NOT RECYCLED
- BOTTLED WATER COSTS $1-$4 PER GALLON
- USE REUSEABLE WATER BOTTLES!!!!
Unless I am mistaken, the Landings Building water is re-run through a second RO sytem. This means that one half of the water that comes in to the landings RO system, along with all of the “embodied energy” associated with its inital treatment and pumping, gets dumped (ie wasted) into the inlet. Does it really taste enough better?
This is an interesting question, Jim! I have sent out some requests for information… I can definitely say that it currently tastes better. In other seasons, I have been unable to tell the R-O water from the regular water. Our original idea was to discourage people from bringing bottled water– our water is perfectly safe to drink. AND, I am so saddened whenever I see single use water bottles taking up valuable space in the recycling and cart spaces on the island, as well as along the side of the road.
Great article, Judy, on the plastic water bottle. As a sailor, I’ve seen the horrible plastic in our oceans.
Plastic is indeed impacting our oceans. Want to read more? Go to
greatgarbagepatch.org for shocking, revealing information. A few other facts about plastic:
*90% of the cost of bottled water is due to the bottle itself
*38 million plastic bottles go to the dump per year in America alone from bottled water. This does not include soda.
*24 million gallons of oil are needed to produce a billion plastic bottles. Talk about a way to decrease our foreign oil consumption!!
Regarding Jim Murrary’s comment about the water at the Landings I will quote John Finney, Operator for the Dewees Island Utility:
“I assume what he (Jim Murray) means is that the RO at the Landings Building, along with the main RO, has a certain amount of water, about 2/3rd that doesn’t get treated and is wasted into the inlet. That has to happen in order for the unit to operate.”
Such is the process of reverse osmosis.