Bottled water is bullshit. Its production and transport to market are sucking the marrow out of our planet and the majority of the disposable bottles that it comes in wind up in landfills instead of recycling centers. What's more, in most parts of the world, when you buy bottled water it's pretty much the same shit that comes out of your tap that you've already paid your taxes (I assume: do what you feel and keep both knees on the wheel,) to get.
Carrying a reusable bottle with you is a very small way to slow the pillaging of our planet and a big way to stick it to the water-for-money-grubbing corporations that are taking advantage of us all. There's just one problem: where to fill up. There's a good chance that you can trot into a coffee shop where you're known to top off your canteen. If you're feeling daring, you could even brave the sink of a public restroom for a bit of water. Things get more complicated, however, when you're out of town, say in a foreign country where you don't speak the language as well as you should. When I went hiking across Spain a few years back, there were days when I had no choice but to buy una botella de agua because I couldn't find the community faucet in the village I was passing through. That sucks. Fortunately, there's a new app out there to help you sort your hydration situation out:
Tap is a simple, effective app that does one thing very well: points out the places in area around you where you're invited to fill up water bottle up. You can filter through the types of water you want--chilled, filtered, sparkling or flavored--and the sort of refill station that you're interested in leveraging: anything from a drinking fountain to a fresh water spring (be sure that you're properly equipped to nuke wee beasties in the water if you opt for the latter.) Once you choose where you want to top off, the app will hand over the directions to your preferred fill up point to Google Maps or Apple Maps.
Pretty Sweet! Oh, and if you need a water bottle to call your own, this one's pretty sweet.
Image via Flickr, courtesy of Marco Verch
