What a great way to start the year!

Denise Richards has recently made the pledge to ban the bottle  in her home and daily life.  She posted an entry on blog in December and we are interested in hearing if she was able to influence others (family and friends) to ban the bottle too!

Banning bottled water from your everyday life is an easy resolution and can have such an enormous impact – especially when people spread the message to others. Did you?

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“Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.’” -Cavett Robert

2012 is almost here. Which no doubt means that many people will be spending a moment or two thinking about how 2011 went and what they want to change for 2012. That’s right its resolution time.

I recently had an interesting conversation about New Year’s resolutions with a family member. She said that instead of making one limiting resolution to lose weight or clean the house more, she chooses a word to act as her theme for the year. Last year, she chose the word “Fun”. Now, that’s not to say that she only does “fun” things but she made a commitment to make the things she did have to, whether it was losing weight or cleaning the house, more fun. Instead of dreading something, she approached all her challenges, activities, etc with an attitude of “I’m going to make this FUN”.

That made me start to think about what would be a good word or mantra for 2012 that relates to banning the bottle. And I realized that most people that would take the time to read this blog are probably already banning the bottle in their everyday lives, so a good word for all us would be “Share”. Share your passion. Share the message. Share your reusable bottles (only if they are clean). Share your resources. Share your knowledge.

Without being overbearing, or becoming  the crazy Ban the Bottle Person that people hide from, start bringing awareness to others in everything you do. If you already have your family and friends on the Ban the Bottle wagon, work on your co-workers, businesses that you patronize, friends of your friends, family of your friends, friends of your family (I could go on and on…). Small, subtle, constant reminders of how important Ban the Bottle can be.

So here’s to 2012 – the year we shared our message.

May 1- 7 is National Drinking Water Week

Did you know?

- In the United States, water utilities treat nearly 34 billion gallons of water      every day

-  In the United States and Canada, the total miles of water pipeline and aqueducts equal approximately one million miles; enough to circle the globe 40 times

- Americans drink more than one billion glasses of tap water per day

- Children in the first six months of life consume seven times as much water per pound as the average American adult

Drink Tap!

Today, people across the United States and Canada are choosing to give up bottled water and drink tap water when available. People are taking a stand in support of public water and against the privatization of our water resources. It is time to unite and ban bottled water.

Join the Canadian Federation of Students, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Sierra Youth Coalition, Development & Peace, the Polaris Institute, and Ban the Bottle in the countdown to Canada’s second Bottled Water Free Day! On March 10 2011, communities across Canada and the world will be mobilizing to take action to ban the bottle and reclaim public water.

History of the Event

Bottled Water Free Day originated in Canada and was organized in March 2010 by the Canadian Federation of Students, Sierra Youth Coalition and the Polaris Institute, as a response to a growing movement of back-to-the-tap practitioners across Canada.

The first ever Bottled Water Free Day was a huge success drawing thousands of Canadians from coast to coast to participate in events that highlighted the negative impacts of bottled water. In the end more than 60 universities and campuses organized events, there were over 60 media stories covering the day, and nearly 4000 Canadians signed a personal pledge to not drink bottled water.

The movement continues to gain momentum as countries around the world are joining organizers in Canada for Bottled Water Free Day in the fight to end the corporate control of water!

What You Can Do

Whether you can contribute 5 minutes or a lifetime in the fight against the privatisation of our public water resources, there are tools for you to take action. Take a look through the website to find out about the issues and get the tools you need to take action.

Talk about it!

Talk to your friends, parent, community members, and classmates about the problems associated with bottled water. In order to win this fight we need to get people talking and build support for our cause. It’s as easy as turning to the person next to you in a class and asking them if they know about the environmental impact of bottled water. So learn the facts and get out there!

As 2010 comes to an end, many people take on the notoriously unsuccessful act of making resolutions for the coming year. Everyone is guilty of making lofty resolutions that don’t come to fruition and then when the next New Year comes around…. they choose the same resolution that they didn’t complete from the year before.

An extremely common resolution is choosing to be healthier – whether it be losing weight, eating better, drinking less alcoholic beverages, joining a gym or just going to the gym more. It’s easy to forget these attempts at being healthier as the year progresses and you quickly go back into your old routine. So instead of forcing yourself to stick to a strict celery-eating-stair-master-for-45 minutes-a-day diet (that you know won’t last after the first pizza commercial you see), tackle a resolution that will  not only benefit you but those around you  - BAN PLASTIC BOTTLES FROM YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE!

Eliminating plastic bottles from your day is actually a lot easier than you would imagine – it is a simple mind-flip. Change the way you think, change your routine and sooner than later using multi-use bottles will be second nature. My mother always said that it takes 2-weeks to change your routine completely, so starting January 1 stop using plastic water bottles with these easy tips and tricks and by Jan 15 you will be bottled water free!

1. Buy 3 – 4 multi-use bottles: Buying just one is never enough. It gets left in the car, in the dishwasher or at a work. If you have several bottles stocked up you won’t resort back to using single-use bottles.

2. Buy a bottle that you don’t mind carrying with you: If you are a woman buy a bottle that can fit in your purse, if you are a man (and chose to not wear a purse) grab one of those handy collapsible bottles that can fit in your pocket. The bottle doesn’t need to big, just big enough to give you a good gulp of water.

3. Fill up your reusable bottle at home: The tap is the easiest and quickest way to water. Grab yourself a Brita pitcher or faucet mounted filter and you have yummy, filtered water available at your finger tips at all times. No need to purchase a case of bottled water when you have a great mechanism that provides you with water without the plastic bottle waste. (Plus Brita recycles their filters so you can feel good about not wasting those either!)

4. When out and about, fill up your reusable water at drinking fountains or hydration stations: Everywhere you go there are drinking fountains and hydration stations are rapidly gaining momentum. It’s actually required that buildings provide access to clean water. Sometimes they aren’t right in front of your face (like the $1.95 bottle of water) but tap into your other resolution of working out more and walk to the free water source.

By eliminating bottled water from your day you are not only encouraging yourself to be take healthy steps but you are helping reduce the millions and millions of bottles that are consumed each year and end up in landfills. Start with these 4 tips and you will soon be helping to the Ban the Bottle in 2011!

Hyatt Hotels has taken a very creative approach to enlist the help of visitors in Hyatt’s green-ing efforts. They are asking groups that book meetings at their hotels to commit to 10 green tasks and in turn Hyatt will give them a 3% rebate…and one of the 10 steps is (drum roll please) BAN THE BOTTLE!

We love anything that gives people a further incentive to stop their bottled water consumption (although saving the earth should be motivation enough). A few of the other tasks are – Recycling, Eat Local and Use Reusable Products.

Great steps to encourage people to take their green efforts on the road. To see all the steps – Hyatt Green Efforts

Bottled water is healthy water – or so marketers would have us believe. Just look at the bottled water labels or ads: deep, pristine pools of spring water; majestic alpine peaks… In reality, bottled water is just water; however, that fact isn’t stopping people from buying a lot of it. Here are some solid reasons to kick the bottled water habit.

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