I remember it as if it were yesterday.

It was about 30 years ago, back in my days at Berkeley, when someone walked into school with a hot new invention. They proudly paraded it around, claiming they were the first one in the entire school to have one.

Well, golly gee whiz, the first Berkeleyite to have something aboslutely new. Imagine that. Clearly, this day had to be marked in history.

So, what was this coveted item?

Was is a cell phone? No.

Was it a Nintendo handheld game? No.

What could possibly be worthy of bragging that you were the first Berkeleyite to have something?

Well, wonder no longer, my friends. That hot new invention was . . . (drumroll, please) . . . a bottle of water.

Yes, that’s right. Thirty years ago, bottled water was a novelty. Some even said back then that it a complete waste of time and money because anyone could walk to the water fountain and get water for free. And obviously it would be a trend that was not going to last, right? Wrong.

Fast forward thirty years and, according to http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/bottled-water-market, the bottle water industry reached “annual sales of 157.27 billion in 2013.”

Nearly two hundred billion dollars on bottled water, eh?

And, here we are in Bermuda, surrounded by water.

Healthy Intake

Doctors recommend that we drink eight cups of water daily.

Currently, one can purchase a case of 48 8-oz bottles of water for about $20.00, which equates to roughly 25 cents per bottle. If you were to consume the recommended eight bottles of water per day, you are looking at a minimum of:

• $2.00 per day

• $14.00 per week

• $56.00 per month

• $672.00 per year

By the time you factor in buying water while out or at an event we can round that off to nearly $1,000.00 per year on drinking water.

Factor in that you should be drinking water for 30-50 years of your lifetime, you could easily end up spending $40,000 on water. Yes, that’s right: $40,000 on water for one person.

Now, throw in the environmental impact of drinking eight bottles per day, and we are looking at over 2,500 bottles of plastic waste, per person, per year.

So in your lifetime you could contribute as much as 100,000 empty bottles of water to the environment.

So, at the end of the day, in our pursuit of staying physically healthy, we are hurting both our pockets and the environment.

Save a Drip. Save a Dollar

Do not despair; one solution is to purchase water filtration units.

In an effort to save your pockets and the environment, I would suggest purchasing one or two of these units. There are many options available.

You may either attach them to your kitchen faucet, or place them in or on specially designed water jugs, thermoses, or individual water bottles that you exercise with or carry with you when you go out.

The water jugs and replacement filters cost less than $100 and the one attached to your faucet costs about $30.00.

By doing this you can save yourselves up to $1,000 per year.

Our health is important. However, our environment and personal finances are equally important. There is no reason we should have to sacrifice one to have another.

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”

— Benjamin Franklin