Curiously Green is an exclusive weekly Earth 911 series showcasing the adventures of a couple going green. This week Sheila, half of our Curiously Green couple from Phoenix, Arizona shares her experience reducing plastic water bottle use.

Sheila Bocchine is a pinhole photographer and Gary Millard is a Phoenix photographer.

She Says: We did it! Our first step to reducing our plastic use, we bought a Brita kitchen faucet water filter system. I’ve lived in places that the tap water was wonderful, but our current home has some not-so-tasty water and as someone who drinks a lot of water and is kinda of a water snob (I even cook with bottled water), it was time to make the switch. I did some research and went with what I thought was the best, but not extravagant system. I was mesmerized by the $300+ reverse osmosis systems and the systems that filter kitchen and bathroom water, but for our needs and budget a simple kitchen water faucet filter will do.

This will greatly reduce our recycling waste and save us a little money. Most of what we recycle are water bottles.

I learned on Ideal Bite that Americans consume more than 2.5 million bottles of water every hour, and only around 10% are recycled. That’s incredible!

And with all the hoopla about bottled water really being tap water, it just makes sense to filter my tap water and drink it.

…a couple days later…

WELL! I must say that I am not impressed with the taste of the water. It does filter the water enough to be drinkable, but does not taste like the bottled water I was used too. I know water doesn’t have a taste and the bottled water could have been just regular tap water, but that bottled tap water tasted 100 times better than my Brita filtered tap water.

Water shouldn’t have a taste, it should just be refreshing. Clean and refreshing. I wished my tap water tasted as good as bottled tap water. Or I just wish I knew how they were filtering it so I could do the same.

If this water doesn’t get any tastier, I might might send Brita back its filter and continue buying bottled water.

Sheila Bocchine and Gary Millard are both Phoenix photographers.