Water, water everywhere and we are fooled to buy it in bottles.

Every year, buyers pay out a collective $100 billion on bottled water in the belief. People are often mistaken, as it happens, that this is good for us than what we get to drink from our taps, from the point of view of environmental think tank the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).

For a part of that total, everyone on the earth could have pure and harmless drinking water and accurate sanitation, the Washington, D.C.-based organization said this week.

All the members of the United Nations agree to halve the number of people who lack dependable and permanent access to safe drinking water by the year 2015. To achieve this target, they would have to double the amount of $15 billion that is used every year on water provision and sanitation.
''Although this amount appears to be huge but it is almost nothing in front of the estimated $100 billion, spent every year on bottled water,'' said EPI researcher Emily Arnold.

''There is no doubt about the fact that clean, pure and affordable drinking water is vital for the health of our global community,'' Arnold said. ''But bottled water is not the solution for the well-established world, nor does it provide answer to the dilemmas of the 1.1 billion people who lack a safe water provision. Expanding and making better the already present water treatment and sanitation systems is just as same as to supply secure and sustainable sources of water over the long term.''

Throughout the world, bottled water consumption has piled up to 154 billion liters (41 billion gallons) in 2004, up 57 percent from 98 billion liters in 1999. EPI tells this in a written analysis mentioning industry data.

From one point of view, it leaves horrifying consequences on the purses of the planet and the consumers.

''It is strange that even in the areas where tap water is safe to drink, requirement of the bottled water is rising, which creates needless garbage and consumes huge amount of energy,'' said Arnold. ''Although in the industrial world bottled water is not healthier than tap water very often, still it may cost up to 10,000 times more.''

The price of bottled water is more than gasoline in the United States at up to $2.50 per liter or $10 per gallon.

A deep and close look at the multibillion-dollar bottled water market rehabilitated the affection of Arnold for the faucet.

We get tap water through an energy-saving infrastructure whereas bottled water travels through long distances, nearly one-fourth of it across national borders. It comes to us by boat, train, airplane, and truck, which involves burning huge amount of fossil fuels,'' Arnold said.

Taking as an example, just in the year of 2004, a Helsinki company shipped 1.4 million Finnish tap water bottles 4,300 kilometers (2,700 miles) away to Saudi Arabia. Although 94% of the bottled water sold in the United States is manufactured domestically, a few Americans import water that is shipped to them some 9,000 kilometers from Fiji and other faraway places to satisfy the need for what Arnold termed ''chic and exotic bottled water.''

A large amount of fossil fuels are used in packaging the water and most water bottles are made with polyethylene terephthalate. It is a kind of plastic that is derived from crude oil. ''Preparing bottles to fulfill Americans' demand for bottled water needs more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually. This is enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year,'' Arnold said.

All over the world, some 2.7 million tons of plastic is used to bottle water every year.

The bottle must be dumped once it has been emptied. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86% of water bottles used in the United States become trash or waste. Incinerating used bottles creates polluted byproducts like chlorine gas and ash consisting heavy metals tied to a host of human and animal health dilemmas. When water bottles are buried, they can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.

From the bottles gathered for recycling in 2004, the United States exported almost 40 percent to destinations as far away as China. It means that even more fossil fuels were burned in the procedure.