Movies, Books, Politicians the Water Bottle is Under Siege
Bring a plastic water bottle at your own risk; the wave of widespread opinion is coming back down against you. From popular rating documentaries, to books and politics, the hot topic on the soapbox is the terror of bottled water and the waste of resources that the industry generates.
The producing, transportation and disposal of water in petrochemical plastic bottles consumes tremendous quantities of water and energy, and produces large measures of greenhouse gases and waste.
Director of the new documentary ‘Tapped: get off the bottle’ Stephanie Soechtig says “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 an across-America roadshow, receiving sponsorships from people 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.
A short film ‘The Story of Bottled Water’ was released on World Water Day in March. From Annie Leonard of the famous ‘The Story of Stuff’, this short film displays the method that amounts to conning Americans into consuming over five hundred million bottles of water each and every week, as opposed to a few cents cost for clean tap water. See the short film on You Tube.
In her book ‘Bottlemania’, writer Elizabeth Royte investigates one of the monumental marketing cons of our century and gives a powerful environmental alarm bell. She investigates the situations we must eventually respond to. Who has ownership of our water? What can happen when a bottled-water factory seizes your town’s water source? Is the water that comes out of your tap absolutely safe? What really is the environmental price of production, transporting and waste of a single plastic water bottle?
Politicians from all around the globe are beginning to understand that they must take responsibility – particularly when the places at which they work are major consumers of bottled water. How often do we see a politician in a function drinking from a water bottle. Why can’t they might be able to find 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 around Australia to cease the retail of bottled water. At least 60 towns in the United States and a handful of towns in Canada and the UK have at this point prevented spending taxpayer funds on bottled water.
It is doubtless that these dilemmas will be discussed come 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.
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