Thinking outside the Bottle (of water)

There's a campaign to kick the bottle - water that is. It's called Think Outside the Bottle (TOTB).
Progressive-minded restaurants are giving up revenue from bottled water to serve their own filtered tap water, which is just as good as what the bottled water companies offer. Part of the challenge is building public awareness about the quality of ordinary drinking water. Many people perhaps don't realize that bottled water comes direct from local aquifers already filtered by public utilities. Tasting the difference is virtually impossible.

The Miami New Times this week takes a look at South Florida's water - bottled and not. It reports that four billion plastic bottles that end up in landfills each year, which also generate more than two and a half million tons of carbon dioxide and require the energy equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil to make — enough to top the gas tanks of more than a million cars.

(Photo of Miami Mayor Manny Diaz who wants to phase out government use of bottled water. Photo by Jacqueline Carini.)

- David Adams