Race you to the water fountain.

I don't know what I did before bottled water. It goes with me to the gym, sits with me at the dinner table, rides with me in my car and is content rolling around my floorboard when I'm done with it. It's convenient. And convenience is always a plus in this crazy world.

According to an article in Fast Company, Americans spent more on bottled water last year than iPods and movie tickets. More than $15 billion was shelled out for Dasani, Fiji, Aquafina, Poland Spring and Evian. And next year, economists predict revenues will increase to $16 billion.

And for what? The United States has the world's largest supply of freshwater. About 5 out of 6 people in the world have no such luxury. We transport the equivalent of 37,800 18-wheelers full of water across the U.S. each week., consuming with disregard unbelievable amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel.

Hell, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on Fiji water, and half the people in Fiji don't know what fresh water tastes like.

Don't worry, it gets worse.

Where do all these bottles go, you ask? In the late 1980s, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in a remote area of the Pacific somewhere between Japan and California. There's a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo involved in the explanation, but basically, the world's ocean currents force much of the sea's pollution into one spot. And the wildlife is suffering because of it.

About 80 percent of the debris comes from land, but unlike ground trash, which biodegrades, the plastic found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces. So small that, ultimately, aquatic organisms and birds ingest it. Then, according to Wikipedia, "plastic waste thus enters the food chain through its intense concentration in the neuston. "

We are literally eating the plastic bottles we think make our life easier. Don't be naive. It's happening. Fast. Scientists say it takes debris from Japan about one year to make its way to the basin, and five years from the U.S. West Coast.

Not only that, the damn thing is gigantic. The basin is twice the size of Texas and contains some 3.5 million tons of trash, about 80 percent of which is plastic. Fish eat the plastic. Fisherman catch the fish. We eat the fish. It's not a slippery slope; it's common sense.

Do yourself a favor. Turn on the tap. Buy a Brita filter if you're too high-class to use a water fountain. I know I will.