Friday night I took my youngest daughter to a screening of Tapped at the nearby Greenwich Audubon Society.  It was an interesting feature length film about the many reasons why we should be re-thinking our bottled water habit.

Admittedly, I am already familiar with the main reasons why we should not be guzzling bottled water. Tapped touched on all of them.

#1 Its really stupid! Bottled water is exponentially more expensive than tap water and no better in quality.  Penn and Teller did some funny stunts around this a few years back.

#2 It’s a waste of fossil fuel. Trucking water around burns gas. And guess what those plastic bottles are made of? Petroleum. In a world where peak oil and climate change are deeply impacting our way of life, there is no room for wasting oil and gas on something stupid like bottled water.

#3 Plastic bottles pollute! We’ve got giant garbage patches in both Pacific and Atlantic oceans now. Less than 30% of all plastic bottles ever get recycled.

#4 Plastic bottles leach questionable chemicals into our bodies. Why drink water from a bottle that could be leaching BPA and phthalates? Both are potent hormone disruptors that are increasingly linked to health effects like brain and behavior changes, cancer, and reproductive system damages.

Something happened at the screening of this movie that has made me more determined than ever to not buy bottled water for myself or my family. Kim Jeffery, the President and  CEO of Nestle Waters, North America and a Greenwhich resident, showed up after the screening to screen an 8 minute film of his own. Despite the fact he refused to be interviewed for the movie, he wanted equal time here in his own backyard.  Afterwards, he took the stage to answer questions, refusing to have a dialog with the film’s producer and director. Talk about rude, this dude takes the cake.

My daughter stood up to ask a question about bottled water in schools. Like a slick politician, he did not answer her question. My daughter didn’t stand a chance getting her point across.  Mr. Jeffery went on to blame lack of  recycling as the reason why plastic bottles are clogging our landfills and oceans.  Meanwhile his corporation along with the American Beverage Association routinely fight bottle bills and recycling legislation.

I’d love to see Mr Jeffery, his wife and four kids to take a nice cruise out to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and see some of the impact his plastic bottles have made on our planet.  Better yet, I hope at least one of  his kids studies environmental science in school and comes home to ask his/her dad some tough questions.

Thanks to the wealthy CEO of Nestle Waters, my daughter is inspired to convince her friends that bottled water is not the way to go. His behavior at this screening did more than me or  the movie to turn my kid into an activist!

Meanwhile, I’ll do my part and drink water from my new Klean Kanteen. See Tapped when you get a chance. Take the pledge to stop drinking bottled water.