I took the “Break the Bottled Water Habit” pledge sponsored by the Center for a New American Dream, a mostly meaningless gesture since I don’t drink plain bottled water, anyway. While most of my fluid intake consists of hot tea, I am sure that my not infrequent consumption of bottled sparkling water, and more than occasional indulgence in Diet Snapple as well as (I am ashamed to admit) Diet Coke also have 100X the environmental impact of drinking tap water. Probably more, actually, given the extra energy required to transport heavier glass bottles for Snapple and the additional extraction, manufacturing, and transport energy bound up in the extra ingredients in Diet Cancer, er Coke. Time to give up bottled beverages, really! Unfortunately, I’m not yet ready to do that because that would mean no fizzy drinks and I am psychologically addicted to carbonation. Perhaps I can wean myself off by setting up a home carbonation system? Of course, even if that would both save me money and reduce the pollution associated with transport, there’s still the environmental problem of the carbonation itself, carbon dioxide–that now infamous greenhouse gas pollutant–released unnecessarily by my fizzy drink fetish!
