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Bottled water is a global nightmare. In India, more than 50 villages have suffered water shortages because local water was drained by companies like Dasani and Coca-Cola.

In the United States, 86 per cent of plastic water bottles are sent to landfill sites. They can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.

Forty (40) per cent of the plastic bottles that people think are being recycled in the U.S. are shipped to China for disposal.

In many cases, tap water is healthier than bottled water. Testing of municipal water in North America and Europe meets higher safety and health standards than the ones that apply to companies that produce bottled water.

Bottled water is a lot more expensive than tap water: it can cost up to 10,000 times more. And the price we pay is not just what comes out of our wallets. The cost of packaging and transporting millions of bottles of water creates huge environmental problems. Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic—derived from crude oil—is used for bottled water each year.

In Canada, many companies use public water supplies, paid for by taxpayers and delivered by municipal governments, to produce their bottled product. They may add minerals and filter the water, but the source is not “pure, spring water.”

The following resources on water bottling for profit can help you protect public water.