It's ironic. In many parts of the world, there is no clean drinking water. Here in the U.S., pure, drinkable water flows out of every tap, and yet Americans buy a staggering amount of bottled water. We pay big bucks for it, too – over $15 billion a year.

Worse of all, the bottles are overflowing our landfills, and contribute to global warming. Take a look at this video from Doug James, and then check out these surprising facts.

More than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water, including Pepsi's Aquafina and Coca-Cola's Dasani. Despite this, bottled water consumption is growing at 10 percent a year, faster than any other beverage. We drink 15 times more bottled water today than we did in 1976.

This doesn't mean we're healthier, despite the ads. Federal regulations for municipal water are far more stringent. Bottled water rules allow higher levels of many contaminants, with more lenient requirements for filtration, testing and reporting. See NRDC's bottled water report for details of contaminants by brand.

The Earth isn't healthier for it, either. According to the Pacific Institute's fact sheet [PDF], manufacturing the 30+ billion plastic water bottles we bought in 2006:

• Required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil – enough to fuel more than one million vehicles for a year. (Note: This was erroneously reported by the New York Times as 1.5 million, and the error is repeated in many places.)
• Produced more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
• Used three times the amount of water in the bottle.

And these numbers don't include transporting the bottles. Nearly 25 percent of bottled water crosses national borders before reaching consumers.

Adding in transportation, the energy used comes to over 50 million barrels of oil equivalent – enough to run 3 million cars for a year.

Case Study: Fiji Water

Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles of water a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water (see Fast Company article). Adding to the irony, Fiji itself uses almost no bottled water, according to a Pacific Institute report [PDF]. They export it.

Shipping Fiji Water around the world increases its environmental footprint. Manufacturing and shipping a one liter bottle produces over half a pound of greenhouse gas emissions, and uses nearly 7 times the amount of water in the bottle, according to calculations by Pablo Päster on TriplePundit.

The heavy use of water is as serious as the greenhouse gas emissions. Water is fast becoming a scarce resource.

We Could Recycle, But…

Recycling would help, but we don't usually do it. Less than 20 percent of the 28 billion single-serving water bottles that Americans buy each year are recycled. Some estimates are as low as 12 percent.

According to a Container Recycling Institute report [PDF], the national recycling rate for all beverage containers is 33 percent. In states with deposit systems, the rate jumps to 65-95 percent. But of the eleven states with deposit laws, only three include containers for non-carbonated beverages (like water), though non-carbonated beverages now comprise 27 percent of the market.

Last November, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a national bottle bill to address global warming that includes water bottles and other non-carbonated beverage containers.

The beverage industry, which long resisted deposit laws, has started to cooperate – mainly because it sees bottled water as the answer to the soda sales slump. Following months of bad publicity, manufacturers like Coke, Pepsi, and Nestlé have begun making lighter-weight plastic bottles, and are encouraging consumers to recycle.

Better Yet, Carry Tap Water

If you buy bottled water, recycle the bottle. But the better solution – for you and the environment – is to drink tap water, both at home and at restaurants:

• Tap water is cleaner than most bottled water.
• Tap water is delivered to homes and offices for $0.002 a gallon. Bottled water, which can cost as much per gallon as gasoline, is a thousand times more expensive.

The quality of municipal water in the U.S. is generally excellent. Don't let the recent reports about pharmaceuticals in tap water deter you – see this TreeHugger post for why.

But if you don't trust tap water, or you have old plumbing, or you think tap water tastes funny, then try a water filter like those from PUR or Brita. To learn more about water filters, check out the rated list of water filter review sites at Consumer Search.

To carry water with you, use a reusable container filled with tap water. But don't reuse single-use water bottles. This can expose you to bacterial build-up and carcinogens leached from the plastic.

Quite a few companies make reusable water bottles. There's an ongoing debate about the safety of the polycarbonate plastic some use, but there are many safe reusable bottles made from other materials.

Use it or Lose it

National Geographic's Green Guide notes, "…the federal share of funding for water systems has declined from 78 percent in 1973 to 3 percent today." This places the financial burden almost entirely on local governments.

Food and Water Watch also talks about how important it is to stop this trend and maintain the quality of municipal water. Their Take Back the Tap [PDF] report gives a detailed overview of the issues surrounding tap water versus bottled water.

What do you think? Can you give up bottled water?

If you've been watching the news, you know we have a climate problem, and you may also know we have a drinking water problem in some parts of the country. What you may not realize is that these two problems are related. Yes, global warming can impact rainfall, but that's not all. The water supply sector uses large amounts of energy to transport, treat, and deliver water. On the flip side, vast quantities of water are required to generate power.

Every year, the U.S. thermoelectric industry uses 3.3 billion gallons of water [PDF]. That's 20 percent of all the water used in the country, excluding agriculture. And this number is projected to more than double to 7.3 billion gallons by 2030. Water is used in all stages in the creation of energy: extracting, processing, refining, and transporting fuel to power generation plants. Power plants themselves also uses vast amounts of water, particularly for the towers that cool the water heated in the generators.

Then there's the energy used to treat and deliver water. California was among the first states to take a close look at this, and they discovered that supplying municipal water accounted for almost 20 percent of the electricity used in the state [PDF]. On average, 75 percent of the cost of municipal water comes from the electricity used to capture, treat, distribute, and use the water. After the water is used, more energy is required to treat the wastewater.

As cities grow, particularly in water-scarce areas, supplying municipal water uses increasingly more energy. Understanding this relationship highlights the importance of conserving water and practicing energy efficiency. For every kilowatt saved, water also is saved. For every gallon of water not used, energy usage is reduced. Investments in and incentives for energy and water conservation must be our highest priority.

In addition to bolstering our conservation efforts at all levels, states and the federal government need to better integrate water and energy supply planning. Other states should follow California’s example and quantify the local relationship between energy and water. Environmental Defense is partnering with the Jackson School at the University of Texas to quantify this relationship in Texas. This information will help the state evaluate water and power projects to ensure that these resources are available to citizens in the future.

Yesterday's New York Times Magazine had an article aptly titled "The Future is Drying Up", about the threats that climate change and booming populations pose to precious water resources in western states. Usually when we think of water and climate change we think of rising sea levels, but climate change is also causing drops in drinking water supplies.

Most people living in the southwestern U.S. get their water from the Colorado River and California's Central Valley, both of which are fed by winter rains and spring snowmelt. Unfortunately, global warming is not only causing more winter precipitation to fall as rain versus snow, but also is causing the snow that does fall to melt earlier. As a result, in some areas reservoirs will fill earlier in the year and less water will be available over the summer.

The chart below shows changes in the timing of the spring snowmelt over the second half of the 20^th century. In many areas, snowpack is starting to melt three weeks earlier than it did 50 years ago.

Source: USGS National Streamflow Information Program. Large circles show sites where changes are statistically significant at a 90 percent confidence level.

Scientists warn that, in some areas, mountain snowpack could disappear completely in the coming decades, and this has water managers concerned about future water supply.

In May, scientists reported that global warming is probably already shifting the entire American Southwest toward a drier climate. The author of the New York Times Magazine article asked one of the researchers whether their study meant that the Southwest is looking at a permanent drought. His striking reply: "You can't call it a drought anymore, because it's going over to a drier climate. No one says the Sahara is in drought."

So what can we do? Water conservation is an absolute must. Some water managers believe that with the right choices, we could meet most municipal, agricultural, and ecological water needs with the dwindling supply. But conservation has to go hand-in-hand with a concerted effort to decrease the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change.