Movies, Books, Politicians the Water Bottle is Under Siege
Bring a plastic water bottle at your own risk; the sway of social opinion is turning away from you. From popular rating documentaries, to papers and politics, the hot topic in town is the horror of bottled water and the waste the industry generates.
The processing, transporting and removal of water in petrochemical plastic bottles eats up large waste of water and energy, and generates ridiculous measures of greenhouse gases and waste.
Director of the upcoming 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 people behind Tapped are publicizing the film with their across-America roadshow, collecting money from citizens to reduce their water bottle abuse and exchanging their used 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. Created by Annie Leonard of the famous ‘The Story of Stuff’, this animated film displays the process that is behind conning Americans into wasting at least five hundred million bottles of water each and every week, despite the option of a few cents cost for a drink from the tap. See this new short film on You Tube.
In her book ‘Bottlemania’, writer Elizabeth Royte demonstrates one of the most massive marketing coups of our century and gives a powerful environmental alarm bell. She investigates the red flags we must eventually deal with. Who owns our water supply? What could happen when a bottled-water factory holds your town’s water source? Is the water that comes from the tap completely safe? What is the environmental factor of production, transportation and waste of a single plastic water bottle?
Politicians from everywhere around the world are realising that they must start the campaign – notably when the buildings where they debate are major consumers of bottled water. How often do we view a politician at a function drinking from a water bottle. They might be able to use a water glass in Parliament House.
Leslie Samuelrich of Corporate Accountability International, stated “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 around Australia to cease the retailing of bottled water. Around 60 townships in the American states and a handful of towns in Canada and the United Kingdom have now banned the spending of taxpayer holdings on bottled water.
Surely this issue will be debated at World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the environment’s most current water-related problems.
Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores.
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