The City of Thunder Bay gets its water from Lake Superior, the largest and most pristine of the Great Lakes.
Delivered directly to your home 24-7 and constantly monitored for quality, your municipal tapwater is the safe and economical choice. In Canada, municipal water supplies are required to be tested daily but this regulation does not apply to water bottling plants.
An affordable water supply should be a fundamental right for all citizens. How much of our water supply do we want to have controlled by large multi-national corporations? Your tax dollars and water bills have built and maintained our municipal water system. Why should you pay an inflated price to a private corporation for a commodity you have already paid for?
Not only is the cost of bottled water many times higher than tap water (as seen in figure 1) but as much as 40% of bottled water originates from municipal water systems. Chances are, you’re just buying tap water with a label! You may also want to consider some of the environmental impacts of buying. bottled water.
- If you fill a water bottle ¼ full with oil, that’s how much oil was used to manufacture and bring that bottle to you!
- 120 grams of greenhouse gases are generated by a single disposable plastic bottle of water
- Most water bottles don’t make it into the recycling system. Plastic litter in the Pacific Ocean has accumulated into a floating island of garbage similar in size to the Province of Quebec.
- It takes over 700 years for plastic to decompose. We’ll be dealing with plastic waste for generations to come.
Figure 1
Make tap water your first choice—use a refillable water bottle wherever you go. Fill a pitcher and provide glasses for meetings and groups. Take a large cooler jug and reusable cups to sports events and tournaments. Save the bottled water only for situations where the nearest water supply is unsafe or inaccessible, and make sure every bottle is collected for recycling.
Page last updated on Thursday, March 08, 2012
