Many Americans have a strong sense of environmental and social responsibility. We try to make environmentally well advised choices in many aspects of our daily living, yet we ignore one of the major contributors to the endangered state of the planet.

Worldwide in excess of one billion people do not have an uncontaminated source of clean drinking water, this is in excess of 1/6 of the world population, yet we, as Americans, spend billions of dollars yearly for the convenience of drinking from a plastic bottle instead of a water tap. Shame on us.

1.5 million tons of plastic are used to manufacture bottled water every year. It also takes in excess of 25 times the amount of water to make each plastic bottle than the bottle contains. 300 million gallons of bottled water are imported to the United States yearly.

In America bottled water is often simply an indulgence. Despite our justifications, it is not a harmless indulgence. Bottled water is an environmental catastrophe. Thirty years ago bottled water barely survived as a business in the United States. Today Americans spent more on "designer" bottled water than we spent on iPods or entertainment tickets - $15 billion in 2007. The expected United States expenditure for bottled water will be $16 billion a year before the end of the decade.

As a country we consume more than 30 billion single-serving bottles of water per year. Bottled water is the fastest growing beverage industry in the world, worth up to $22 billion a year. Less than 15% of plastic bottles are recycled, the rest end up in the refuse systems and cost America's cities over 70 million per year to handle clean up and landfill expenditures. America yearly produces in excess of 800,000 tons of plastic bottle pollution that substantially magnifies global warming.

Last year, Americans carelessly tossed out 38 billion plastic water bottles, about $1 billion worth of plastic. That's an overwhelming waste, especially considering 1.5 million barrels of oil - enough to power 100,000 cars for a year - were used to manufacture these bottles. And that's not even including the gas and oil required for packing, shipping and delivering this gigantic volume of liquid.

If you are choosing to purchase bottled water, you are basically buying plastic, which is manufactured from petroleum products. When we buy a bottle of water, what we're often purchasing is the bottle its self. One of the main problems with bottled water production is the reliance on fossil fuels. From manufacturing to transportation, bottled water relies on oil, using 17 million barrels of oil and producing massive amounts of carbon dioxide every year.

In the United States alone, we are hauling 1 billion liters of water around a week in ships trains and trucks. That is a weekly giant convoy equivalent to 37,800 18 wheelers. Water weighs 8 1/3 pounds a gallon. It is so heavy you cannot fill an 18 wheeler with bottled water--you have to allow empty space.

There is an simple earth friendly solution. Tap water is considerably less expensive. As an investigative reporter for the NY Times points out, almost all municipal water in America is so good that nobody needs to import a single bottle from Italy or France or the Fiji Islands.

Clean and safe drinking water should be public and affordable. The more the wealthy opt out of drinking tap water, the less political support there will be for investing in developing and maintaining America's public water supply. That would be a serious loss.

Access to affordable, pure water is basic to a nations health. In Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the trendiest bottled water on the U.S. market, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have a pure or dependable source of drinking water. Therefore it is easier for the average American in Seattle or Boston to quench their thirst with refreshing Fiji water than it is for the majority of people in Fiji.

If you decide to get your recommended eight to ten glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,500 or more every year. The same amount of tap water would cost pennies a day. Recent studies show that many brands of bottled water fail to meet industry guidelines and the cost of even inferior quality bottled water can grow quite high.

Much of bottled water is only plain tap water. Many bottled water firms repackage tap water into plastic bottles, then sell them back to the consumer at prices higher than gasoline and increasing just as rapidly. Aquafina, as an example, has finally been pressured into amending its labels to advise consumers that Aquafina water comes from tap water. Why not just drink tap water? More than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water.

Plastic containers poisonous toxic chemicals. Have you considered why your plastic bottle of water has added a label warning telling you not to reuse it? The longer you continue to use that bottle, the more likely it is to leach toxic chemicals into your drinking water.

There is a green solution. If you are not confident in your local tap water or wish to quickly filter tap water when on the go, carbon-filtered tap water is safer and costs much less than bottled water. The Environmental Working Group states, "carbon filtration of tap water will dramatically lower levels of toxic by products; it is also 10 to 20 times less expensive than bottled water, and does not produce the waste and pollution associated with the packaging and transport of bottled water."

A portable water filter is a perfect solution for water filtration on the go. A portable water filter allows anyone to filter their own water, no matter where they travel; across town or around the world. A portable water filter allows you to free yourself from any unpleasant taste, contaminates or additives. while protecting the environment and your pocketbook. Involve the whole family. A five member family will save well over $7,500.00 a year.

Stop being unwitting victims of manipulative advertising. When a entire industry is built up by overwhelming us with a product we do not need, when an entire industry is based on packaging and presentation, not the product, it is worth asking how that happened and what the future impact is upon our precious planet.