Message In A Bottle
by Tao Oliveto
We gotta talk. Yes, again.
According to the NY Times article, bottled water sales now exceed coffee nationally. Water, something that flows freely from our U.S. taps (some of the safest and best in the world) is instead being sucked from the earth thousands of miles away, bottled and shipped - turning it into an expensive and unnecessary luxury - as well as a kind of environmental monster.
No matter what the exploding bottled water industry will tell you , the sad truth is that most empties end up in the trash instead of recycling bins. (I could dig up some of the statistics I’ve seen, but all you need to do is look in any public trash can - go ahead, take a peek.) Bottled water is wastefully shipped to the U.S. from all over the world, burning fuel and spewing carbons in the process and, according to the Earth Policy Institute, using up 1.5 million barrels of oil /year just to make the #x!* PVC-filled plastic it comes in.
Fortunately, growing almost as rapidly is the momentum to get plastic bottles off the shelves, out of restaurants, and out of the waste stream. The Big talk started sometime last year, when Mayors of San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and NYC came out of the closet, encouraging their citizens to choose tap water over plastic bottles.
Anti-bottled water campaigns are also trickling into workplaces and online, most often from employees or citizens, who have caught on to the logic. Some people even think bottled water should be “banned”. Do I think this is an all or nothing proposition? I somewhat reluctantly, have to say no. Although I only drink from my filtered tap and carry my own reusable stainless steel drinking container everywhere I go (really - it feels natural now, like a wallet or keys), this problem seems more like many in the U.S., where we tend to think if a little is good, more is better. I’d like to see bans on sodas first, which hurts our health as well as the environment.
Speaking of our health, don’t forget that the chemicals in plastic end up in our bodies, during the manufacturing process and through consumption of the water or food that it contains. Another reason to come clean and kick the habit.
August 15th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
thank trace for this article, i too have read the same article. and i always carry my own bottle for a refill of water, at the water fountain where i work, i never really understood the whole water thing. but, i do agree with the bottles all over the place. when i cleaned up the classroom, at the end of school there were over 12 bottles all over the place. this is such an easy problem to solve. tell the world and also add the plastic bag item also. again, my thanks for bringing this to our attention….
August 15th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Tracey,
There’s an article on treehugger where the EPA issued a bulletin that said human bodies are no longer biodegradable. The average body is now only 35% organic!?
The article states, “due to changes brought about by modern detergents, silicone implants, and processed cheese food product, it is no longer safe to allow human tissue to come into contact with our nation’s topsoil.”
If that’s not a good reason to quit with the bottled goods then I don’t know of one!
August 16th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
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January 3rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
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