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Help EWG Bottled Water Research (and win a prize!)
"Purified by equatorial winds." "Pure as the driven snow." "Resonates with the energy and frequency of well-being." Your ... bottled water?Bottled water companies use some fancy phrases to tell you what's in their products. But personally, when it comes to purification, I'll take reverse osmosis over equatorial winds.
Environmental Working Group wants to make sure bottled water companies give you accurate and useful information about their water sources, purification techniques and water quality testing results. But first, we need to do some research. And that's where you come in.
Join the 2009 Bottled Water Label Scavenger Hunt.
Here's how to get involved:
- The next time you need to buy a bottle of water (even we EWG'ers sometimes forget our reusable bottle) choose a non-sparkling, unflavored water bottled in glass or clear plastic.
- Carefully remove the entire label from the bottle. We need all the information from the label, so if necessary, cut the plastic around the label to get it all off.
- Write down:
- the name and location of the store where you purchased the water
- the date you purchased the water
- your name, email and mailing address
- Mail your labels and other information to:
Environmental Working Group
Attn: Nneka Leiba
1436 U St. NW, Suite 100
Washington, DC 20009
Whoever sends the most labels (duplicates not counting) by June 15 will win a stainless steel water bottle with the EWG logo and a jumbo-sized, reusable grocery tote printed with EWG's pollution solutions tips. Plus, everyone who participates will get a Shopper's Guide to Pesticides magnet!
We work hard to make sure you have the scientific facts behind the products you buy. But we can't do it without your support.
So helping out with EWG research? That definitely will make you "resonate with the energy and frequency of well-being."
Kind of cool but kind of weird because it's rewarding people for buying bottled water. I know it's for science. But still. Kinda weird.
Where can I buy relatively safe plastic drinking glasses?... can't even find anything through Google...... we have someone in our house who has difficulty grasping objects and frequent use of glass containers [admittedly best to use re health] ....may frequently cause dropping and breaking them. Thus, good reusable plastic glasses are what we would like. Can't find them anywhere. Only the awful polycarbonate type,....and many are not even stamped with the # on the bottom. Help.
Thanks......Your site is wonderful......Tom
Tom H
Colfax WIS
Hi Beth -- definitely a good point and definitely one we've discussed in coming up with the contest. Clearly EWG doesn't support buying bottled water, for many reasons, and we're hoping that no one takes the contest as a reason to buy bottled water they wouldn't otherwise. (Everyone forgets their stainless steel bottle sometimes!)
And in the end, we think the value of the research we'll do merits this ask. There's a new CA law requiring more stringent labeling of bottled waters, effective Jan. 2009, so we'll be looking into how the industry is responding to this new regulation. Our goal is to hold the bottled water industry accountable for the claims that it makes about its products, and for that we need the most current labels from across the country (which are most easily acquired with help from our supporters).
I know it's still weird, but maybe that helps explain where we're coming from?
Hi Thomas, thanks for using our site! We definitely do recommend using glass if possible, so I'm not sure of a specific type of plastic cup to recommend. But in general, BPA is the chemical you want to watch out for in polycarbonate plastic, and there are several companies now advertising BPA-free products. You'd probably get pretty far with a Google search, and I know some EWG'ers have had good luck with Soft Landing (http://www.thesoftlanding.com/).