Bottled water is great – except for the bottle.

We’re not saints, but we are looking for ways to minimize our impact. 100% post-consumer plastic is one thing we’re doing at Grower’s Secret. And because we’re in the organic fertilizer business, we spend a lot of time thinking about the food chain and the larger ecosystem.

We know that you know that we know you already know a lot about this topic, but we still find the numbers appalling, like a car wreck you can’t help looking at.

Bottled Water's environmental impact:

• 60 Million plastic bottles a day are disposed – and that’s just America!
• Massive amounts of greenhouse gases are produced from manufacturing the plastic bottles.
• Millions of gallons of fuel are wasted daily transporting filtered tap water across America and around the world.
• It requires 3-times as much water to make the bottle as it does to fill it.

• Americans will buy an estimated 25 billion single-serving, plastic water bottles this year. Eight out of 10 (22 billion) will end up in a landfill.
  (-- Container Recycling Institute)
• Worldwide 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.
  (-- OneWorld)
• 1.5 million barrels of oil are used annually to produce plastic water bottles for America alone - enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year.
  (-- Earth Policy Institute)
• Imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way up with oil. That's about how much oil was needed to produce the bottle.
  (-- National Geographic)
• In 1990, Americans bought 1.1 billion pounds of plastic in the form of bottles, according to the Container Recycling Institute. In 2002, they bought more than three times that - 4 billion pounds.
• Along with plastic bags, plastic bottles are one of the most prevalent sources of pollution found on our beaches.

• In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each but only recycled an average of 23 percent. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfills.
• According to the Beverage Marketing Corp, the average American consumed 16.2 gallons of bottled water in 2000. In 2006 that number jumped to 27.6 gallons.

Our personal favorite:

• Many studies show that the quality of bottled water may be no better than tap water.