Bear a plastic water bottle to your own hazard; the pressure of public view is turning against you. From top rating documentaries, to books and political campaigns, the hottest issue on the soapbox is the terror around bottled water and the waste that the industry generates.
The processing, transportation and waste of water in petrochemical plastic bottles eats up large amounts of water as well as energy, and generates tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases and waste.
Director of the upcoming documentary ‘Tapped: get off the bottle’ Stephanie Soechtig states “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 crew of Tapped are promoting the show with an across-America roadshow, receiving money from Americans to lower their water bottle waste and taking their used plastic water bottle for a reusable stainless steel bottle. Download Tapped from Amazon or iTunes.
Another short film ‘The Story of Bottled Water’ was released on World Water Day in March. Created by Annie Leonard of the acclaimed ‘The Story of Stuff’, this film shows the method that goes into convincing Americans into purchasing at least half a billion bottles of water a week, despite the option of a few cents cost for tapwater. Find the animation on You Tube.
Through her book ‘Bottlemania’, investigator Elizabeth Royte investigates one of the greatest marketing takeovers of the last century and gives a super environmental wakeup call. She explores the questions we must at some point understand. Who owns our drinking water? What could happen when a bottled-water factory possesses your town’s source? Is the water that comes out of a tap wholly safe? What is the environmental price of producing, transporting and disposing of every plastic water bottle?
Politicians from around the international community are beginning to understand that they need to take responsibility – notably when the buildings where they work are huge consumers of bottled water. How often do we view a politician in a political debate sipping from a water bottle. Surely they must be able to use 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 society of Australia to prohibited the sale of bottled water. About 60 townships in the States and a handful of towns in Canada and the UK have lately stopped expending taxpayer holdings on bottled water.
It is doubtless that these issues will be brought to the table in World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the world’s most problematic water-related events.
Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores.