Try a reusable bottle

Miranda Krestovnikoff explains why

Wildlife TV presenter and Bristol 2015 ambassador Miranda Krestovnikoff’s is switching to a reusable water bottle instead of a single-use one, to help keep our beaches and oceans clean.

Britons buy an estimated 13 billion plastic bottles of water each year, of which more than 75% of these are not recycled. They are dumped as landfill, or thrown onto our streets, parks, hedgerows, fields, forests, rivers and beaches. Most of the plastic in the sea has flushed off the land. It doesn’t decay, it just slowly disintegrates. Tiny fish eat the plastic fragments. Bigger fish eat little fish. We eat bigger fish. Our plastic waste is now part of our global food chain.

A litre of bottled water is 1000 times more expensive than tap water, there is no health difference and no evidence that it’s cleaner or better quality. Blind taste tests show that most people can’t tell the difference and actually up to a third of all bottled water sold in supermarkets is re-processed tap water.

Yet each of us spends on average about £200 per year on bottled water. It’s the same average price per litre as petrol. And yet a reusable water bottle costs as little as £1 and can last several years and the tap water refills would cost an average of 20p per person in total for a whole year.

So for your wallet and the environment make the shift to a reusable bottle one of your Do15 pledges.

And now you can refill your bottle at local businesses supporting the Refill Bristol campaign — go here for details refillablecities.com–