Cindy Crawford Saves the Environment One $20 Water Bottle at a Time

     It’s not quite champagne wishes or caviar dreams, but supermodel-turned-mommy Cindy Crawford is now offering tips on how to live a more environmentally conscious life.

     Crawford appeared on ABC’s May 7 “Good Morning America” to share with viewers something “a little less red carpet, a little more green” – her “eco-awakening.” [1]

      “I mean, we’ve all have seen the Al Gore movie and green is on, it’s on top of the mind for everybody,” Crawford said. “But, it is overwhelming. I have a very full life as well, so it’s like ‘Oh, I can’t compost my own stuff.’”

     “But my kids go to a school in Malibu and it’s super-environmentally conscious,” Crawford said. “We do beach clean ups, try to use less plastic as a school. And so, that kind of made me think what can I do? And, I teamed up with PUR [2], which is a water filtration company. They do the things you can attach to your faucets, as well as those pitchers and we came up with a reusable water bottle.”

     That’s sounds great, except the reusable water bottle, made by a company that directly competes with the bottled water industry, isn’t cheap.

     “The other great thing, which is on their Web site, Thirstyforchange.com [3], if you buy one of these, which is $19.99, which is the normal price – the proceeds go toward safe drinking water for children in undeveloped countries. You know, kids are dying if they don’t have clean water.”

     According to “Good Morning America” host Diane Sawyer, Crawford was studying to be a chemical engineer at Northwestern before New York beckoned, but she might have missed a math class or two when they were teach percentages.

     According to Crawford and the “Thirsty for Change” Web site, Americans use 50 billion water bottles a year.

     “Fifty billion in America and only 50 percent are recycled,” Crawford said. “So that’s like 38 billion that aren’t recycled.”

     Thirty-eight billion is not 50 percent of 50 billion. Assuming that Crawford is correct about 38 billion unrecycled bottles that would mean roughly 24 percent of them are recycled.

    In April, Vanity Fair announced Crawford would be a regular blogger for their Web site. Crawford wrote on April 15 [4] that other eco-celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Laurie David and Sheryl Crow, have been inspirations for her.