Banning Bottled Water

America, it seems, has a love for everything bad for the environment - even when something is supposed to be good for us.

This includes the water we drink.

I admit a love for bottled water and the roots go back to an 8th grade field trip. That's right, I'm blaming school on this one.

We were taken to the municipal water plant to tour the treatment facilities. Believe me, this is nothing for a young, impressionable young mind to witness. Dead fish floating in water that would be coming out of my tap - not to mention the description of how our raw sewage is treated before being dumped back into the very same waters where our drinking waters are collected.

I imagined a huge circle of water becoming waste, only to become our water again.

I wouldn't drink water as a kid and drank way too much pop and now my kidneys are revolting for that.

When bottled water came along, I began drinking it, only because I didn't associate it with that filthy treatment process.

Of course, now I know bottled water probably comes from the same place as tap.

When we moved to the Ozarks, we had to use bottled water as the tank we had refilled was nastier looking than the treatment facilities I remember as a kid.

Of course, polluting the environment with more plastic is not a good thing and it bothers me everytime I crush a gallon jug - even if I am preparing it for the recycle bin.

Hopefully, our well water will soon test alright for drinking and we can forego the expense and the waste of using plastic bottles.

In the meantime, an article on how some restaurants in St. Louis and other cities are banning bottled water in their establishments due to the effect on the environment:

http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/574546.html