When you reach for that plastic bottle of water, you are making a choice that affects you and others in ways you may not realize. 

Without knowing, you could be drinking water from the San Bernardino National Forest where drought is devouring the aquifer. Thirty-six million gallons were taken last year using a permit that expired in 1988. This is water stolen from future generations.

Or, your water may come from Evart or Micosta County, MI, where Nestlé withdraws 300 million gallons of Great Lakes water each year. Meanwhile, residents of Flint have no access to this clean water. 

Or, your water could come from other small towns where Nestlé convinces the local depressed communities that the company will help the economy if they surrender their water at a negligible cost.

If you’re drinking one of Nestlé’s 52 brands of water, including Perrier, Poland Spring, Deer Park and San Pellegrino, you’re supporting a company that sells Nestlé formula as better than breast milk, contibuting to 800,000 additional deaths and gastrointestinal illnesses every year.

If you’re drinking Fiji brand water, you are preventing local residents in Fiji from drinking their own clean water, unless they want to pay for it. You may also think you are drinking the purest water. But after Fiji ran an ad campaign claiming their water was cleaner than Cleveland’s, the city ran tests and found Fiji water had levels of arsenic not present in Cleveland’s water. 

(Bottled water companies are not required to disclose as much information as municipal water systems since the FDA, which oversees bottled water, doesn’t have the authority of the EPA, which oversees city water supplies.)

What’s inside your water bottle is more than water. The production of plastic water bottles uses an estimated 17 million barrels of oil each year. The manufacturing process emits three tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of bottles manufactured. Then, there is the energy used in transporting, cooling and recycling bottles. The Pacific Institute estimates the amount of energy used is equivalent to filling the bottle one quarter with oil.

It makes sense to feel some pride when recycling, as though we are doing our civic duty. But recycling masks enormous waste, especially these days when recycled goods have a very low value. China used to import our recycling, but today much of it just gets stored. Eighty percent of plastic water bottles end in the landfill or incinerator. Some ends up in the ocean, where it does not decompose like paper or plants, but simply photodegrades into smaller and smaller pieces. Fish and other animals ingest them, starving them of nutrients. When we eat those fish, we are ingesting the plastic particles as well. 

The bottled water companies would like us to continue buying their water. In 2014, Americans spent $18.82 billion on what they could get from the tap instead.

Hopefully, in the future, you’ll grab your metal water container and fill it from the tap.