Forbes magazine reports that “over the last two years, Coca Cola and Nestle have both rolled out campaigns aimed at minority moms.” According to author Miriam Muley, 46% of all U.S. mothers are Latina, Black or Asian. A recent study in the Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine found that Latino and black parents are three times more likely to give their children bottled water than white parents. The same study found that minority parents perceived that bottled water was healthier than tap water, and that they were spending up to 17% of their household income on bottled water.
While bottled water is healthier than soda, it is NOT healthier than tap water, which is free. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) conducted a four-year review of the largely unregulated bottled water industry’s products. NRDC discovered that 25% or more of the bottled water WAS really just tap water in a bottle. The survey also found that 22% of the brands tested contained at least one chemical contaminant at levels above strict state health standards and that 17% of bottled waters contained unsafe levels of bacterial loads. Another study found that water stored in plastic bottles for 10 weeks contained cancer-causing phthalates, which leached from the plastic to the water.
Tap water is clean, regulated and free. Giving your kids bottled water instead of tap water deprives them of flouride added to tap water to maintain oral health.
The decision to purchase bottled water instead of using tap water carries enormous costs, not only for minorities on limited incomes, but for the environment. 
According to another NRDC report, 82% of Hispanics in Southern California buy bottled water at an average price of $1.13 per gallon. Bottled water costs up to 10,000 times more per gallon than tap water. It takes 1.5 million barrels of oil a year to make plastic bottles for the U.S. bottled water market, and even more barrels of oil to transport them. Some estimate that 80% of all single use water bottles used in the U.S. simply become litter with billions of bottles being washed into the oceans, where they stay in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or wash up as litter on beaches (like the Philippine beach pictured on the right). Plastic water bottles take over 1,000 years to degrade. The plastic never goes away though…it just breaks down into smaller plastic particles turning the oceans in to a plastic soup.
This EcoDorm at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina achieved Platinum LEED. Some ecofeatures include a rainwater cistern for landscaping and toilets, passive heating and cooling strategies, photovoltaic panels and use of local, salvaged and recycled materials throughout the building.
