Take a plastic water bottle at your own hazard; the pressure of public perspective is coming back down against you. From popular rating documentaries, to articles and politics, the biggest issue in town is the menace around bottled water and the waste of resources that the industry forces.
The production, transportation and disposal of water in petrochemical plastic bottles demands large quantities of water alongside energy, and creates tremendous measures of greenhouse gases and waste.
Director of the upcoming 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 crew of Tapped are promoting the documentary with their across-America roadshow, collecting money from citizens to lower their water bottle abuse and taking their used plastic water bottle in exchange for a reusable stainless steel bottle. Download Tapped from Amazon or iTunes.
Another such film ‘The Story of Bottled Water’ was released on World Water Day in March. From the pen of Annie Leonard of the critically acclaimed ‘The Story of Stuff’, this short animation shows the methodology that goes into tricking Americans into wasting more than half a billion bottles of water a week, instead of a few cents cost for water from the tap. Check out this new short film on You Tube.
Through her book ‘Bottlemania’, author Elizabeth Royte demonstrates one of the most massive marketing coups of the last century and demands a powerful environmental wakeup call. She explores the situations we must at some point understand. Who distributes our water? What could happen when a bottled-water factory possesses your town’s water source? Is the water that comes out of the tap entirely safe? What is the environmental factor of making, transporting and disposal of a single plastic water bottle?
Politicians from all around the world are acknowledging that they must take responsibility – particularly when the places at which they work are major consumers of bottled water. How often do we view a politician in a press conference 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, claimed “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 of Australia to prevent the retail of bottled water. At least 60 cities in the US and some cities in Canada and the UK have lately banned spending taxpayer funds on bottled water.
It is certain that these problems will be discussed in World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the world’s most time-sensitive water-related dilemmas.
Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores.
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