Though bottled water may be considered a convenient alternative to tap water, it comes at a huge environmental cost. The real cost of bottled water comes from the amount of crude oil used to make a year's supply of empty water bottles. That amount of crude oil would fuel 100,000 cars for a year. The Pacific Institute calculates this to be more than 17 million barrels of oil annually, which is equivalent to 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Even more oil is used as fuel to haul bottled water to consumers all over the world.

The disposal of plastic waste is another problem. According to the Container Recycling Institute, each day in the U.S. more than 60 million water bottles are thrown away. Only about 12% are recycled. Some 40 billion bottles a year end up in landfills where they take about 1,000 years to biodegrade. Others are incinerated, releasing toxic by-products into the air. The rest end up as litter on the roads and beaches or in streams and other waterways.

There is an area of floating plastic trash in the Northern Pacific Ocean that's twice the size of the state of Texas. Described as the "biggest trash dump in the world," much of it consists of old plastic bottles. Experts say that dangerous chemicals from industrial waste stick to the plastics and enter the food chain as birds and marine life ingest it. "There is no technology to get rid of the plastic," says Marcus Eriksen of the nonprofit Algalita Marine Research Foundation. "The only solution: stop adding it to the ocean."

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