Movies, Books, Politicians the Water Bottle is Under Siege
Bring a plastic water bottle at your own risk; the sway of widespread belief is coming back down away from you. From high rating documentaries, to books and political debate, the biggest issue around is the horror that is bottled water and the waste its industry pumps out.
The producing, transportation and removal of water in petrochemical plastic bottles consumes big use of water along with energy, and creates ridiculous quantities of greenhouse gases and waste.
Director of the new 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 team behind Tapped are publicizing the movie with their across-America roadshow, collecting donations from Americans to lower their water bottle numbers and swapping their old 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 famous ‘The Story of Stuff’, this short animation explores the strategy that amounts to convincing Americans into buying more than half a billion bottles of water a week, compared with a few cents cost for tapwater. See the animation on You Tube.
In her book ‘Bottlemania’, investigator Elizabeth Royte explores one of the biggest marketing takeovers of the last century and provides a powerful environmental wakeup call. She investigates the red flags we must come to respond to. Who distributes the water? What could happen when a bottled-water business stakes a claim on your town’s drinking water? Is the water that comes out of your tap absolutely safe? What really is the environmental footprint of making, transporting and disposal of a single plastic water bottle?
Politicians from everywhere around the nation are realising that they have to do something – especially when the meetings where they work are major consumers of bottled water. How often do we see a politician at a debate sipping from a water bottle. It is probable that they can locate 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 group of Australia to prevent the selling of bottled water. About 60 places in the United States and some in Canada and the UK have lately banned expending taxpayer funds on bottled water.
Surely this issue will be on the agenda at World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the world’s most time-sensitive water-related events.
Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores.
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