A colleague at the paper sent me a link to this interesting story about bottled water.

FACT: "24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi."

I've never bought into the bottled water phenomenon and never understood why people would pay good money for something that comes right out of the tap for free. And, I've always thought those individual bottles were recklessly wasteful -- all that plastic just made to be thrown away. Oh, sure, they recycle some of it, but you know darn well that there are tons of those bottles in lying in the landfills.

I confess to having bought bottled water occasionally -- in fact, I'm sipping on a Dasani bottle now (that I've been refilling with tap water for, well...far to long judging by the lipstick on the rim). I buy kid-size "sport" bottles of water for my kids -- but, truth be told, I buy for the bottle and we reuse again and again and again. I bought a 10-pack of their water sometime back in January and we still have two bottles left.

And, as long as I'm on the subject of people and their stupid drinking habits (or maybe it's the soft drink giants, Coca-Cola and Pepsi I should be bashing) -- what's with everyone drinking Gatorade all the time? It's become fashionable to carry around a sport drink. A sport drink that is FULL of calories, salt and sugar. A sport drink designed to be used by ATHLETES while they are working out. I scoff every time I see some schmuck walking around with a bottle of Gatorade -- surely it's so we all know they're a big-time athlete, right?

Whatever.