Yes, I Made an Environmentalist Post. Try Not To Faint.

Today I saw Starbucks's brand of bottled water, Ethos. According to the company, for every bottle purchased, five cents will be donated to helping people around the world access clean water.

This is unabashed greenwashing. (For a lovely use of the word unabashed, in an equally lovely pro-feminist and unfortunately discontinued webcomic, click here.) Bottled water contributes to the privatization of water, which is not something we need. Bottled water companies can contribute to environmental degradation and to aquifer depletion, especially in poor rural areas. Bottled water requires a lot of fossil fuel to make the bottles and to transport it to its destination, and most of the bottles end up in the trash, not the recycling.

I have a better idea. Find a glass mason jar, glass wine bottle, or other glass container with a lid. Find some old rags, and rubberband them around the container to protect it from breaking in case of rough treatment. Fill your new water bottles from the tap, and for each commercial water bottle you don't buy, donate five cents to your local stream, bay or river cleanup, or to an organization working to promote responsible water use, or dig wells. There you go-- just like Ethos, except... ethically.