The Problem with Plastic Water Bottles
Bear a plastic water bottle at your own risk; the sway of public opinion is coming back down away from you. From top rating documentaries, to articles and political campaigns, the hot topic in our lives is the horror of bottled water and the waste its industry forces.
The production, transportation and removal of water in petrochemical plastic bottles requires huge quantities of water along with energy, and generates ridiculous quantities of greenhouse gases and waste.
Director of the new documentary ‘Tapped: get off the bottle’ Stephanie Soechtig sums it up 1500 water bottles end up in landfill every second that s 30 million water bottles a day! We wanted to show people just how much waste is generated by bottled water. The people behind Tapped are publicizing the show with their across-America roadshow, asking pledges from Americans to reduce their water bottle waste and changing their old plastic water bottle for a reusable stainless steel bottle. Download Tapped from Amazon or iTunes.
A similar film ‘The Story of Bottled Water’ was released on World Water Day in March. From Annie Leonard of the well-received ‘The Story of Stuff’, this short animated film shows the method that amounts to convincing Americans into buying over hundreds of millions of bottles of water a week, compared with a few cents cost for a drink from the tap. Find this animation on You Tube.
Through her book ‘Bottlemania’, investigator Elizabeth Royte investigates one of the biggest marketing takeovers of this century and demands a strong environmental alarm. She investigates the questions we must inevitably deal with. Who has ownership of the water distribution? What will happen when a bottled-water company seizes your town s water source? Is the water that comes out of your tap entirely safe? What is the environmental factor of production, transportation and disposal of a single plastic water bottle?
Politicians from all around the globe are acknowledging that they have to do something notably when the institutions in which they debate are huge consumers of bottled water. How often do we witness a politician at a government function sipping from a water bottle. It is probable that they can drink from a water glass in Parliament House.
Leslie Samuelrich of Corporate Accountability International, told “Cities and states are spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on bottled water, and that’s not to mention what’s spent to deal with all the plastic bottles that are thrown out.”
In July 2009, the NSW rural town of Bundanoon became the first group around Australia to ban the sale of bottled water. Around 60 towns in the United States and some places in Canada and the United Kingdom have lately stopped the spending of taxpayer money on bottled water.
It is doubtless that these issues will be on the agenda at World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the environment’s most urgent water-related events.
Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores. For more information about eco-friendly water bottle choices, visit Biome Eco Stores today.