This year's current issue addresses energy, and energy conservation. Over the past five years bottled water use has increased over 57% and there has been an increasing demand on water from exotic places such as Fiji, India (Dansi) and pure glaciers. What many people do not realize is that bottled water contributes significantly to the degregation of our environment in many ways. Not only does the cost of transporting bottled waters from remote locations contribute to pollution, global warming and needless energy waste, it can also have a negative impact on the sensitive locations that it being pumped from.

Wasted Energy: A copious amount of energy is wasted in the collecting, bottling and transportation of bottled water. Due to all the energy required to place bottled water on the shelves, it costs more per gallon than gasoline.

Depletion of Renewable resources: Fossil fuels (crude oil) is used to make the plastic, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), commonly used for water bottles. According to the Earth Policy Institute, meeting American's annual bottled water demand demand requires over 1.5 million barrels of oil , which is sufficient to fuel over 100,000 cars for a year and prevent 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

Waste: Most used bottles end up clogging land fills, where they can take over 1000 years to biodegrade. According to Earth Policy Institute, in America 86% of bottles are not recycled, of those that are, almost half are shipped over seas, requiring more fossil fuel use.

Pollution: As bottles break down, they often leach contaminants into the soils, in some cases these chemicals contaminate our ground water, potentially harming our future water supply.

Impacts to local water systems: Many places are complaining of low flowing rivers and shrinking lakes due to volume of water that is being withdrawn and then shipped out of those communities.