Let's go viral with this excellent action on bottled water

The Center for a New American Dream emailed me to ask for our help, so before I even start, let me ask you to email this post to everyone you know.

Blog about it. Give it love on Digg, Reddit, all the other sites and send it to your grandma. Because we have a chance here to make a real difference on keeping our drinking water clean and drinkable while reducing carbon emissions and plastic bottle waste.

What I mean is that, with our help, a campaign to Break the Bottled Water Habit, co-sponsored by the Center for a New American Dream and by Corporate Accountability International, could go viral on the internet and we could turn the blogosphere into the ACTIONosphere.

Here's what we can do:

• Make this post go viral, if you're willing, by emailing, Digging and blogging
• Sign the Break the Bottled Water Habit pledge here.
• Write letters--and get your friends to write letters--to your store, restaurant or coop manager asking them not to stock bottled water (see sample letter here).
• Get yourself a reusable bottle and fill it with tap (or use a jar like me).

Here's the pledge:

I pledge to Break the Bottled Water Habit by Thinking Outside the Bottle and using a reusable water bottle instead of buying bottled water. I also pledge to support the efforts of local officials to stop spending public funds on bottled water and prioritize strong public water systems over bottled water profits.

Read the Center for a New American Dream's five tips for kicking the bottled water habit here.

Here are some facts:

• Bottled water is up to 1,000 times more expensive than tap water
• Forty percent of bottled water is tap water anyway
• Bottled water is less stringently regulated than the FDA than tap water
• The production and disposable of plastic bottles stresses the habitat we depend upon for our health, happiness and security
• The transportation of water around the world by ship and plane causes unnecessary carbon emissions
• Bottling companies are buying up water rights around the world which means free water may not be available at all in the future.

Do we want to see our children paying skyrocketing water prices the way we are paying skyrocketing gas prices?

Because here's the thing: in the United States, tap water is a wonderful, virtually free, and an entirely healthy natural resource. Watch the Nightline video below. In tests of drinking water quality, bottled water simply didn't come out on top. And in taste tests, New York City tap water beat both Poland Spring and Evian.

So what can we do? Let's reject bottled water and support the maintenance of our public drinking water supplies. To do that, let's all join the Break the Bottled Water Habit campaign and encourage everyone we know--and everyone we don't know--to do the same.

And please, please, please, leave a comment here on the blog (go to NoImpactMan.com) saying what action you've taken so we can all encourage each other. Let's show the Center for a New American Dream and Corporate Accountability International that we make a difference.

Now watch the Nightline video below if you aren't too busy already emailing all your friends: