Terrible Facts about Bottled Water!

I came across this infographic the other day that made me realize how terrible bottled water is. I always drink tap water and refill plastic bottles with tap water simply because I don't think it tastes bad and also to save a bit of money. After seeing the infographic below, I am sure to always choose tap water over bottled water, and expect every one to do so. Bottled water companies spend billions of dollars worldwide to advertise and promote their "so-called healthy" water. Don't be a victim of marketing and start helping the environment.

While a large portion of the world desperately seek clean drinking water, the United States and other countries spend billions on bottled water when perfectly clean drinking water is readily available. Not only are we needlessly spending money on water with lower standards than those of tap water, we are also filling our landfills with billions of pounds of oil based plastics that take thousands of years to degrade. This graphic will visually present an overview of bottled water.

Transcript:

Average price of tap water: $0.0015 per gallon

Average price of bottled water: $10.00 per gallon

Bottled water is around 10,000 times more expensive than tap water

Annually, Americans consume 8.6 billion gallons of bottled water, 53 billion gallons globally.

This generates $51 billion.

40% of all bottled water is taken from municipal water sources (aka. tap water).

22% of tested bottled water brands contained chemical contaminants at levels above strict state health limits.

Bottled water versus tap water:

Tested for e. coli - Bottled NO, Tap YES

Required to provide source - Bottled NO, Tap YES

Required to produce quality reports - Bottled NO, Tap YES

Can still be distributed when tap water standards are not met - Bottled YES, Tap NO

17 Million barrels of oil are used in the production of water bottles yearly, enough to fuel 1 Million cars a year.

It takes three times the amount of water to produce the bottle as it does to fill it.

Only 1 in 5 water bottles are recycled, the other 4 contribute to the 3 billion pounds of waste from plastic water bottles.

'Traditional' Turtle slaughter in Australia

Many sea turtle species, along with the rare Dugong, are becoming more and more threatened by human activity and see their populations decline at an alarming rate.

The Queensland's Animal Care and Protection Act is meant to protect these animals.
However, in the name of the 'politically correct' and tradition, exceptions are allowed for some aboriginal communities in the North of Queensland.

These communities pull out these helpless animals onto the sandy beach. Still alive and once immobilized, the limbs are sliced off and the turtle is left to bleed to death. Eventually, the poor creature is beheaded.

These practices have no place to be in 2010. These communities should be told how to pursue some of their cruel traditions in a sustainable way (if any).
And like I read on another site, no one would even think about doing such thing to a cow.

Please be aware: Some of the footage below contains graphic content.

In the meantime, on the other side of the world...

More information on Turtle & Dugong slaughter

Deep Sea Under the Pole - Amazing Arctic Expedition

After centuries of polar expeditions, a crew of eight young adventurers went on a challenge to cross the Arctic ice cap. Their 800 kilometer trek was punctuated by underwater dives, scientific measurements and -30°c blizzards! The Arctic is a little known part of the world, but what is under the ice cap is even more of a secret to us.

As you will see in the footage below, the ice forms amazing underwater sculptures, home to very mysterious marine species. Unfortunately, like most of the rest of the world, this region is also under threat. Do not hesitate to read this article about why we should leave the Arctic alone.

Source: DeepSeaUnderThePole.com

Save trees, print your files in .wwf format rather than .pdf!

Save as WWF, Save a Tree!

It is with this tagline that the World Wildlife Fund launched a new file format in order to save trees. Every year, millions of square kilometers of forets are cut down in order to produce paper. Paper recycling is still extremely low at a world level and people often print pages for a single use before dumping them away.

The new .WWF format works just like a .PDF but cannot be printed. This is a great way to entice people to save paper, and therefore our world's forests.

Every day, entire forests are cut down to make paper. Paper that’s senselessly used to print out documents all over the world: websites, emails, even entire books, in spite of the fact that it's easy to avoid printing by saving the document as a PDF. But even PDFs can sometimes also be printed out. So to stop unnecessary printing and encourage a new awareness about the use of paper, we’ve developed a new, green file format: WWF. A format that can’t be printed out. A simple idea that saves trees. Join in. Decide for yourself which of your documents don’t need printing - and save them as WWF.


SAVE AS WWF, SAVE A TREE

More information on WWF

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The Death of the Oceans? - BBC Documentary with David Attenborough

For those who follow me on Twitter, I sent a message calling for my Australian followers to watch a BBC documentary entitled "The Death of the Oceans?". This great documentary highlights the beauty of our oceans and what lives in there, as well as the terrible impact of human activities such as climate change, pollution and overfishing.

Sir David Attenborough reveals the findings of one of the most ambitious scientific studies of our time - an investigation into what is happening to our oceans. He looks at whether it is too late to save their remarkable biodiversity.
Horizon travels from the cold waters of the North Atlantic to the tropical waters of the Great Barrier Reef to meet the scientists who are transforming our understanding of this unique habitat. Attenborough explores some of the ways in which we are affecting marine life - from over-fishing to the acidification of sea water.
The film also uncovers the disturbing story of how shipping noise is deafening whales and dolphins, affecting their survival in the future.

BBC

For those who haven't seen it yet, you can watch it below (or you can watch it again if you haven't already).
And don't forget to share this around!









The video is also available in high definition here.

No more fish in the Seas [Infographic]

I stumbled across the infographic below which depicts the evolution of fishstocks for some of the main species victims of overfishing. I personally wonder how this same graph would look like if bluefin tuna and shark populations were represented.

Transcript of the text on the infographic:

People eat a lot of fish. In fact, per capita fish consumption has nearly doubled in the last 50 years. The problem is that they may not be anymore fish if we keep catching and consuming them at this rate. To calculate how many fish are left in the ocean, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations measures how many of each species were caught each year. Assuming that fishermen are catching as many fish as possible (and they usually are), the logic goes that fluxuations in the number of fish caught gives a fairly good indication of fluxuations in fish populations. Here is a look at how some of our most popular fish are doing.

Click on the picture for full size view

Source: "No More Fish in the Sea"