Movies, Books, Politicians the Water Bottle is Under Siege
Bring a plastic water bottle at your own peril; the wave of public perspective is turning away from you. From top rating documentaries, to articles and political campaigns, the hot issue in our lives is the menace of bottled water and the waste its industry generates.
The production, moving and waste of water in petrochemical plastic bottles demands large amounts of water and energy, and produces ridiculous quantities of greenhouse gases and waste.
Director of the new documentary ‘Tapped: get off the bottle’ Stephanie Soechtig states “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 promoting the show with their across-America roadshow, asking money from people to reduce their water bottle use and swapping their empty plastic water bottle 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 the pen of Annie Leonard of the acclaimed ‘The Story of Stuff’, this short animation shows the methodology that is behind swaying Americans into wasting at least hundreds of millions of bottles of water each and every week, as opposed to a few cents cost for a drink from the tap. Check out this documentary on You Tube.
With her book ‘Bottlemania’, author Elizabeth Royte investigates one of the greatest marketing tricks of this century and gives a super environmental wakeup call. She investigates the questions we must come to respond to. Who appropriates the water? What happens when a bottled-water corporation stakes a claim on your town’s water supply? Is the water coming out of the tap absolutely safe? What really is the environmental price of producing, transportation and waste of one plastic water bottle?
Politicians from all around the nation are acknowledging that they are required to take responsibility for action – notably when the buildings in which they collate are major consumers of bottled water. How often do we witness a politician in a debate drinking from a water bottle. Surely they should be able to drink from 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 place around Australia to prohibited the retailing of bottled water. Around 60 cities in the States and a few in Canada and the UK have recently prohibited the expenditure of taxpayer money on bottled water.
Surely these issues will be debated come World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the world’s most current water-related events.
Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores.
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