Environment

Bear a plastic water bottle at your own hazard; the sway of popular view is forming against you. From high rating documentaries, to the written word and politics, the hot topic in our lives is the horror of bottled water and the waste the industry forces.

The processing, transporting and removal of water in petrochemical plastic bottles requires large quantities of water along with energy, and creates large amounts of greenhouse gases and waste.

Director of the recent 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 team behind Tapped are publicizing the show with their across-America roadshow, receiving donations from people to take down their water bottle use and taking their old plastic water bottle in exchange 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. By Annie Leonard of the critically acclaimed ‘The Story of Stuff’, this new film displays the strategy that is used to tricking Americans into consuming over hundreds of millions of bottles of water a week, as opposed to a few cents cost for clean tap water. Look up her film on You Tube.

In her book ‘Bottlemania’, investigator Elizabeth Royte explores one of the monumental marketing heists of the twentieth century and gives a sudden environmental wakeup call. She explores the situations we must come to understand. Who appropriates the water distribution? What can happen when a bottled-water factory holds your town s source? Is the water that comes from the tap absolutely safe? What is really the environmental cost of producing, transportation and waste of one plastic water bottle?

Politicians from all around the world are beginning to realise that they have to start the campaign notably when the meetings where they collate are large consumers of bottled water. How often do we witness a politician at a conference drinking from a water bottle. Why can’t they should be able to find 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 place in Australia to stop the retailing of bottled water. About 60 towns in the States and a few in Canada and the UK have banned spending taxpayer dollars on bottled water.

Surely these dilemmas will be tabled at World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the globe’s most current water-related dilemmas.

Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores. For more information about eco-friendly water bottle choices, visit Biome Eco Stores today.