The Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council (NMEAC) is the Grand Traverse region's oldest and best-known grassroots environmental advocacy organization. Meetings are the 2nd. Tuesday each month—the public is invited.

Bottled water sales dry up
For the first time in decades, the $11.1 billion bottled water industry is stuttering. Experts say that an increasing sense of environmental awareness across the U.S. is influencing consumer choices. Environmental groups take credit after campaigning for years against the industry over waste, safety concerns and the corporate privatization of water.

Bottled Water Toxicity Shown To Exceed Law
Bottled water brands do not always maintain the consistency of quality touted in ads featuring alpine peaks and crystalline lakes and, in some cases, contain toxic byproducts that exceed state safety standards, tests show. The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization with offices in Oakland, tested 10 brands of bottled water and found that Wal-Mart's Sam's Choice contained chemical levels that exceeded legal limits in California and the voluntary standards adopted by the industry. The tests discovered an average of eight contaminants in each brand. Four brands besides Wal-Mart's also were contaminated with bacteria. The environmental group filed a notice of intent to sue Wal-Mart Tuesday, alleging that the mega-chain failed to warn the public of illegal concentrations of trihalomethanes, which are cancer-causing chemicals.

Bottled Water: The Height of Stupidity
Bottled water is a joke, one of the biggest consumer and taxpayer ripoffs ever. I applaud California's Attorney General Jerry Brown who said recently that he will sue to block a proposed water-bottling operation in Northern California by Nestle. Attorneys General everywhere should require recycling of all plastic bottles and containers by requiring deposits to be paid to encourage returns, as is the case with aluminum cans. Not only do society and the environment pay an unfair price for this consumer hoax, but consumers are being hoodwinked. They are paying from 300 to 3,000 times more than the cost of tap water without any benefit.

Canadian Cities Leading the Charge Against Bottled Water
Seventy-two municipalities from 8 provinces and 2 territories have implemented restrictions on bottled water. The last 12 months have not been kind to the big three bottled water manufacturers Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi, whose bottled water sales are down while the number of bans continues to increase.

Australian town bans bottled water sales
Residents of a rural Australian town hoping to protect the earth and their wallets have voted to ban the sale of bottled water. Residents of Bundanoon cheered after their near-unanimous approval of the measure at a town meeting Wednesday. It was the second blow to Australia's beverage industry in one day: Hours earlier, the New South Wales state premier banned all state departments and agencies from buying bottled water, calling it a waste of money and natural resources. "I have never seen 350 Australians in the same room all agreeing to something," said Jon Dee.

Why Can't We Just Stop Drinking Bottled Water!
Human beings are basically a watertight envelope filled with fluid and a few bony bits. We need water. Plus, it's great for your skin. But the main reason the bottled water industry has exploded over the last decade isn't because tap water is unsafe. It's because, with the market for soft drinks basically flat, beverage manufacturers needed a new growth industry. They piggy-backed the chic of bottled water sold in restaurants in places like Europe (where the quality of tap water can sometimes be iffy) onto health worries of all kinds and mounted large advertising campaigns, complete with pictures of snow-capped mountains, pristine streams, and healing mineral springs. And we bought it. Big time. So what's wrong with us? It's not as safe, it's bad for our planet and it's clearly more expensive. It's just become a nation wide nasty habit. So let's all start today and SAY NO to bottled water. Done. Finished. Never again.

Give Bottled Water the Boot
For the price of one bottle of Evian, you can receive 1,000 gallons of tap water. Most of the price of a bottle of water goes for its bottling, packaging, shipping, marketing, retailing and profit. Just supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, enough to take 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Billions of plastic water bottles end up in landfills each year, taking up valuable landfill space, leaching toxic additives, such as phthalates, into the groundwater and taking thousands of years to biodegrade. Tell your favorite restaurant or grocery store to, "Kick the Bottled Water Habit!" Ask the chef, manager, or owner to pledge to: