This contest makes no sense. You are saying that bottled water is bad, so go out and buy more and turn in the labels? The person who buys the most bottled water wins? How about the person who doesn’t buy any bottled water wins? Wouldn’t that make more sense?

What about the water used in manufacturing soft drinks, sports drinks, etc, sold in plastic containers? Or the water content of any drink, that’s more than plain old water, sold in a plastic container, for that matter.

As for the plastic bottles in the landfill problem: If I don’t buy bottled water, more than likely I’m buying some other drink that’s in a plastic container -- have you tried buying a non-alcohol drink that’s not in a plastic container? How are the plastic bottles from not-just-water drinks any different (and they’re usually much higher volume, thicker plastic also)? Given the negative health effects of most of these other drinks, one can’t really make the argument that they’re better drinks in any meaningful way.

In the case of my household, in earthquake country, we use the bottled (spring) water as a sort of insurance policy for the day(s) that city water simply isn’t available or potable after “the big one”. We also don’t regularly buy any other type of bottled water-based drink, so our plastic drink bottle consumption is offset. The plastic bottles we do use go to the local recycling center. There are other factors used in our decision to go this route but this one makes the most sense for where we live.