Americans send billions of water bottles to landfills each year. On tour, bottled water is an easy and sometimes necessary solution...but I recently thought about the number of bottles in the trash, and wondered if there is a way to do better.
The topic is a bit of a worm-hole...if we're on tour outside the country, drinking the tap water can actually get you sick (thank you, Tijuana). I think most people are OK with their own local water, but as soon as you leave home, tap water can taste weird...for example, to me New York water is totally sketchy (it tastes the way the subway smells).
Bottled, filtered local tap water has its own problems ($1.50+ for a product I can for free at home? Plus, it tastes like dirt).
On the other end of the spectrum, a lot of people here in the U.S. drink bottled waters that are flown halfway across the world. I started wondering about the waste it is creating (jet fuel, shipping truck emissions, cardboard & plastic packaging).
So what's the best option? I don't really know yet. I'm going to try to start bringing a small water filter on tour. I have a water filter at home that I use regularly, so I don't use many bottles at home, and it works really well. Someone needs to invent a sports bottle with a built-in filter...
Britta started this interesting campaign to promote filtering your own water. Pretty cool. Check them out here:
http://www.filterforgood.com/index.php
Incidentally, I just realized I never officially blogged about the Music For Relief t-shirts I designed. You can check them out and purchase one here:
http://bandmerch.seenon.com/detail.php?p=58965&v=musicforrelief
mike
