Brita's Claims

A commercial for Brita brand water filters claims that last year (2011, presumably), Americans consumed enough bottled water to encircle the Earth 190 times. It also claims that their filters remove 300 bottles per person from that statistic every year.

Let's do some math.

The circumfrence of the Earth is about 24,900 miles at the equator, give or take a few miles.

1 mile = 5280 feet.

That makes the circumfrence of the earth 131,472,000 feet.

That figure x 190 is 24,979,680,000. Yes, that's nearly 25 billion feet! Multiplied by 12 that is 299,756,160,000. That's nearly 300 billion inches!!!

The average (plastic) bottle of water (500 mL is the standard size) is about 7-8 inches long. Let's be generous and call it 8 inches. In order to reach that figure of encircling the Earth 190 times, Americans alone would have to consume 37,469,520,000. That's over 10.2 million bottles of water every day.

That means every man, woman, and child in the U.S. would have to have consumed almost 125 bottles of water per year. Somewhat less than those 300 bottles the commercial claims. A company exagerrates its claims. I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.

These are my calculations. If anyone finds a problem with them, let me know.

Meanwhile, I do my part by using a tap water filter and reusable metal water bottles.