We were recently approached about featuring a video about the hidden costs of bottled water.  As a trash hauling and junk removal company in the San Francisco Bay Area, we see more thank our fair share of empty plastic bottles on every trip we make to the recycling center and unfortunately, we see discarded plastic bottles even more often at the landfill.  The following video makes some striking observations and “grades” bottled water very low for their lack of eco-friendliness. We hope you think twice next time before you opt for bottled water over tap water:

 Environmental: F

Locally: (F) Americans toss 35 billion plastic bottles a year. That’s 111 bottles per person. Each bottle requires about ¼ of its capacity in crude oil to be produced and distributed. Recycling just one bottle would save the same amount of energy required to power a 60 watt bulb for 6 hours. Unfortunately, only 20% of water bottles are recycled each year.

Globally: (F) Plastic is not very biodegradable, therefore every bottle that winds up in a landfill will last for hundreds of years. 22 billion plastic water bottles are tossed in landfills each year. Manufacturing sucks up 1.5 million barrels of oil per year – enough to power 100,000 cars.