Coca-Cola may bottle Willamette River water?

My first thought when I read this headline from the AP today was "Mmmm… Yum!" What other questionable sources does Coca-Cola use for its bottled water if they're considering Oregon’s most polluted river? If only its customers knew they were drinking nothing better than tap water. Sure, residents of Wilsonville get their tap water from the Willamette, too. But Federal regulations are much more stringent for tap water than they are for bottled water. The Clean Water Act requires fairly strict and constant monitoring of municipal water supplies, while bottled water is considered a "food" and entails much less frequent monitoring for safety and quality by the Food and Drug Administration or individual states.

When you factor in the costs and environmental impacts of plastic water bottles, tap water becomes an even better choice. 1.5 million barrels of petroleum per year goes into producing "disposable" water bottles, 125 million of which end up in Oregon landfills. Beginning Jan. 1, Oregon will add water bottles to the state's five-cent deposit recycling program, which hopefully will reduce that number.

Still, if bottled water is possibly less safe than tap water, much more expensive, and it needlessly wastes energy to create millions of plastic bottles and ship water around the world, why not drink your own tap water in a refillable bottle? It's clearly the better choice from an environmental, health and economic perspective. Just make sure to choose a refillable bottle that does not contain the potentially dangerous chemical bisphenol A (BPA), which is known to leach into the water (or other beverage) you put in the bottle. Those hard, clear bottles made of colorful polycarbonate often contain BPA.  Find out more about alternative water bottles that don’t leach this hormone-mimicking chemical.

Thank you very much, Coca-Cola, but I’d rather drink Bull Run tap water out of my Klean Kanteen than buy bottled Willamette River water.