Bring a plastic water bottle to your own risk; the tide of public view is going on you. From high rating documentaries, to articles and political campaigns, the biggest issue around is the horror of bottled water and the waste of resources that the industry demonstrates.
The producing, moving and removal of water in petrochemical plastic bottles consumes large use of water along with energy, and produces large measures of greenhouse gases and waste.
Director of the new documentary ‘Tapped: get off the bottle’ Stephanie Soechtig claims “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 pushing the movie with an across-America roadshow, collecting pledges from donors to reduce their water bottle use and changing their discarded 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. From Annie Leonard of the critically acclaimed ‘The Story of Stuff’, this film explores the method that is behind convincing Americans into consuming more than hundreds of millions of bottles of water each week, compared with a few cents cost for water from the tap. Look up this new documentary on You Tube.
With her book ‘Bottlemania’, author Elizabeth Royte investigates one of the biggest marketing heists of our century and provides a strong environmental alarm. She asks the red flags we must eventually deal with. Who distributes the water distribution? What could happen when a bottled-water factory holds your town’s drinking water? Is the water that comes out of your tap wholly safe? What is really the environmental price of making, transporting and disposal of a plastic water bottle?
Politicians from everywhere around the globe are beginning to understand that they need to take responsibility – especially when the meetings at which they collate are major consumers of bottled water. How often do we see a politician at a meeting sipping from a water bottle. They should be able to use a water glass in Parliament House.
Leslie Samuelrich of Corporate Accountability International, held that “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 stop the sale of bottled water. Around 60 townships in the American states and a handful in Canada and the UK have lately prohibited the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on bottled water.
No doubt these problems will be debated at World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the world’s most current water-related issues.
Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores.