Plastic Water Bottles, Which Enabled a Drinks Boom, Now Threaten a Crisis (wsj.com) 271
Bottled water, which recently dethroned soda as America's most popular beverage, is facing a crisis. From a report: A consumer backlash against disposable plastic plus new government mandates and bans in places such as zoos and department stores have the world's biggest bottled-water makers scrambling to find alternatives. Evian this year pledged to make all its plastic bottles entirely from recycled plastic by 2025, up from 30% today and among the boldest goals in the industry. Executives at parent company Danone hope the move will help it regain market share and win over plastic detractors who are already pressuring the makers of straws, bags and coffee cups.
There's a big problem. The industry has tried and failed for years to make a better bottle. Existing recycling technology needs clean, clear plastic to make new water bottles, and bottled-water companies say low recycling rates and a lack of infrastructure have stymied supply. Danone, for its part, is betting the reputation of its flagship water brand on a new technology that claims to turn old plastic from things like dirty carpets and sticky ketchup bottles into plastic suitable for new water bottles. [...] Bottled-water sales have boomed in recent decades amid safety fears about tap water and a shift away from sugary drinks. Between 1994 and 2017, U.S. consumption soared 284% to nearly 42 gallons a year per person, according to Beverage Marketing Corp., a consulting firm. Further reading: Microplastics Found In 93 Percent of Bottled Water Tested In Global Study, and Amazon Wants To Curb Selling 'CRaP' Items it Can't Profit On, Like Bottled Water and Snacks: Report.
There's a big problem. The industry has tried and failed for years to make a better bottle. Existing recycling technology needs clean, clear plastic to make new water bottles, and bottled-water companies say low recycling rates and a lack of infrastructure have stymied supply. Danone, for its part, is betting the reputation of its flagship water brand on a new technology that claims to turn old plastic from things like dirty carpets and sticky ketchup bottles into plastic suitable for new water bottles. [...] Bottled-water sales have boomed in recent decades amid safety fears about tap water and a shift away from sugary drinks. Between 1994 and 2017, U.S. consumption soared 284% to nearly 42 gallons a year per person, according to Beverage Marketing Corp., a consulting firm. Further reading: Microplastics Found In 93 Percent of Bottled Water Tested In Global Study, and Amazon Wants To Curb Selling 'CRaP' Items it Can't Profit On, Like Bottled Water and Snacks: Report.
Easily solved (Score:5, Insightful)
Use a deposit. Every can costs you 50 cents more which you'll get back upon return.
Works like a charm in other countries.
We Swiss are even dumb enough to recycle without deposits, silly us.
And if worse comes to worst, use aluminum cans! Beverages taste better from those anyhow...
Re:Easily solved (Score:4, Interesting)
When there is a disaster, the beer companies will switch over to water so that they can assist the disaster victims. And yes, they use aluminum cans.
https://www.nydailynews.com/ne... [nydailynews.com]
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Good thing. Last thing anybody wants during a disaster is terrible can beer.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Easily solved (Score:5, Funny)
And if worse comes to worst, use aluminum cans! Beverages taste better from those anyhow... When there is a disaster, the beer companies will switch over to water so that they can assist the disaster victims. And yes, they use aluminum cans. https://www.nydailynews.com/ne... [nydailynews.com]
Switch over? Isn't most mass produced American beer basically water anyway?
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Isn't most mass produced American beer basically water anyway?
It doesn't matter, because we drink it so cold that we can't taste it.
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Switch over? Isn't most mass produced American beer basically water anyway?
Yes but it can't be drunk by minors. Also you're ignoring the profit motive. It gives American breweries a chance to save costs because when they go through they 15 step process of making beer, they start at step one (fill the hopper with water) and then just jump to step 15 (pour in bottle).
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What? Six row and two row barley are both available everywhere.
Most european beer is made with six row barley, two row barley is the realm of craft beers.
Rice and corn sugar are tasteless alcohol adders. Also anything containing rice or corn is NOT BEER.
Have you ever made a single batch of homebrew? I doubt it.
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Re:Easily solved (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't have a metallic taste if they're coated. That's a failure of bottling and design.
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Coated with hormone affecting BPA plastic? Mmm.. Hormone affecting BPA plastic.
What do you think they use inside canned food these days? I'll give you a hint, but it wasn't BPA plastic. Not even back in the 1800's.
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Yeah coated with plastic.
You think plastic is the only thing used? So in say 1820 what do you think they used on the inside of the can. This is of course to stop lead leeching and acid in the food from rusting the can from the inside out.
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In 1820 they didn't use aluminium.
Canning on a large scale was first practiced by the French who used glass jars on a huge scale to preserve food for Napoleonic period armies. In fact the invention was the result of a bounty offered by the French government. It was the British who introduced metal 'tins' during the 1820s made of tinned iron and (stroke of genius here) soldered with lead.
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The plastic doesn't interfere with or survive the aluminum recycling process due to the melting point of aluminum being over 650C. There is a small amount of pollution generated, but it's far less than what's generated in the process of smelting raw aluminum ore.
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Re:Easily solved (Score:5, Interesting)
A story comes to mind. As a kid, we'd hang out and buy candy at the nearby 7-11 convenience store. My friend pointed out that there were two bottles in the dumpster. Naturally, I dove into the garbage to return the bottles for the deposit money. After the lady behind the counter informed me that they didn't accept that particular brand, I walked back outside to find my friend laughing at me because he had just tried 5 minutes earlier.
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Do you have very easily accessible bottle deposit redemption facilities - as easily accessible as the bottle sale facility?
Japan does not do deposit, but does have an empty bottle container attached to most vending machines. You don't have to carry your empty bottle far before you can dispose of it.
In most countries with a deposit scheme, it's not easy to get your deposit back. If you buy a drink in most shops in, say, Helsinki, you can't return it there for a deposit. Similarly in Denmark - only larger sup
Re:Easily solved (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan does not do deposit, but does have an empty bottle container attached to most vending machines.
Japan has a weird cultural taboo of drinking or eating while walking.
So when they buy a drink from a vending machine, they will stand there by the machine while they consume it, then drop the empty container in the bin.
In normal countries, people will retrieve the drink from the machine and walk away with it. So the attached bin will be of little use.
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I walk away from the vending machine in Japan (gaijin superpowers), but still take advantage of this and will use the bin of a later vending machine (I at least make an effort to find one that sells the same drink) or a convenience store. Japan has another big difference from North America: almost no public trash cans, resulting in recycling being easier than discarding in trash.
Metro-North railroad seems to have stolen this idea from Japan; many suburban stations have a paper/can/trash "recycling center"
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Around the lunar new year the Japanese buy "mochi" rice treats to give as gifts. So vendors will pass out free samples of these chewy and sticky treats to people passing by. Since walking while eating is a taboo, they will immediately stop and stand still while they eat it. But that takes a while, so you soon get a tight cluster of several dozen people standing still and blocking the sidewalk while chewing furiously with strained expressions and looking like they are all trying to get gooey peanut butter
Re:Easily solved (Score:5, Interesting)
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We Swiss are even dumb enough to recycle without deposits, silly us.
We . . . Americans . . . need a serious cause to get us off our hairy assess . . . what we need is . . .
A War on Water!
Re:Easily solved (Score:5, Insightful)
And NO, I am not a liberal. But I hate seeing trash on the roads, floating down the curbs/rivers/streams/lakes/oceans. Are you really that blind that you don't see this shit?
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Or go back to glass; that worked fine, it seemed.
Even better: When you want water use a cup and a faucet.
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Flavored water is not healthy for you (diabetes, cancer, etc.) and the bottles damage the environment.
Just drink tap water... or, if your tap water doesn't taste good, get a filtered pitcher (like a Brita).
No excuse for all of that plastic waste.
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I would assume it's because Tucson has terrible tap water.
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If glass "worked fine" companies never would have switched to plastic.
Glass worked better in some ways, but there's more profit in using plastic. But that's only because we don't account for the costs, as usual. Add a cleanup tax to account for the percentage of bottles which aren't recycled, and they'll solve the problem themselves. (Don't charge it for compostable containers.)
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As a result the poor collecting bottles refuse to pick up glass
Glass is environmentally harmless, and uneconomical to recycle. So this seems like a good outcome.
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Glass is fragile and heavy, meaning there is loss to breakage during transport and the transport cost is increased from the additional weight.
Why they don't use aluminium cans is beyond comprehension. I'm just glad that most sparkling water is available in cans instead of plastic bottles, so at least there's a precedent. We just need the countries of the major producers of bottled water to pass laws to make those plastic bottles illegal. Most of the sparkling water comes from the same companies anyway!
Re: Easily solved (Score:3)
How about glass bottles? (Score:3)
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There are areas where glass bottles are a concern though.
Beaches for example. A broken glass bottle can become quite dangerous.
Plastic bottle took over not only because they are lighter, but also because they can go anywhere.
Seems to me aluminum is the better solution. It's also super recyclable.
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Beaches for example. A broken glass bottle can become quite dangerous.
How did we ever survive ~600 years of broken glass and pottery bottles along beaches/shorelines/etc before the new craze of this shit happened anyway? Seems to me the issue is more of a problem of liability then anything else.
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How did you survive? Injuries, surgeries, not to mention statistically you didn't even survive as long.
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How did you survive? Injuries, surgeries, not to mention statistically you didn't even survive as long.
It's a liability problem then. That also depends on what you mean by "survive long" living to your 70's and 80's was considered an achievement but a lot of people made it to their 50's even in the ye olde days of peasantry.
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Lifespans in the ancient world are sorely misunderstood because of infant and child mortality. If a typical Roman made it to age 14, they had a 50% chance of making it to 60.
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Perhaps, in the past, bottles and pottery were much more expensive and not tossed away after a single use?
Nope. Considering they still dig up 300-400 year old brown glass bottles along the Thames that were used for one-off beer drinking, don't think that was the problem. Pottery on the other hand was dirt cheap, any garbage dump from about 1700-1300 will tell you that much.
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Perhaps, in the past, bottles and pottery were much more expensive and not tossed away after a single use?
Sort of. [wikipedia.org]
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You mean that "think of the children" prevails over "think of the planet"?
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Alternatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its piped into my house and costs pennies a gallon. Good luck finding a public water fountain these days.
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Lead included free of charge.
Re: Alternatives? (Score:2)
No lead in our local water, nor copper, trivial iron, low calcium, and no herbicides, pesticides, or industrial chemicals. And no chlorination either. There is about 0.4 ppm fluoride, and about 60 ppm silica. All in all good water. So I just use a non- disposable bottle to carry some around when I need it.
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You seem overly concerned about that.
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Public water fountains are making a comeback in shopping malls and office buildings. They now come with filters and a digital readout for how many plastic bottles were saved.
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I like my gym. They have a water fountain, with a tap for filling bottles, but don't feel the need to greenwash what people have for years been doing out of water fountains (fill reusable bottle). Plus by not having the display there's less e-waste generated that poor African kids will have to burn to recover precious metals!
Re:Alternatives? (Score:4, Interesting)
Mineral water has things tap water doesn't. You are stupid.
Almost half the bottled water available in the US actually come from public water sources. They do filter it before bottling, and may add small traces of minerals such as sodium for taste.
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Very few people in the USA drink mineral water.
It's just nasty until you get used to it.
If you live in Germany, you've got the wrong idea about American bottled water.
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A/C wasn't common until the 50s/60s, so people probably drank more water to cool off.
Woosh :-)
Why not use cans? (Score:5, Insightful)
Aluminum cans are easy to make from recycled cans, tend to get recycled more, and are more compact per volume of liquid than plastic bottles.
Hell, I'm seeing soda makers moving from cans to bottles more; this seems counterproductive. Just keep using aluminum cans!
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Bottles are nice for the larger sizes since they are closable.
I haven't seen any 12oz bottles, and even 16oz seems to be the domain of cans.
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By making them not cans.
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Bottles are nice for the larger sizes since they are closable.
When the energy drink craze started in Australia there were a few companies that released canned products which exceeded the recommended daily maximum caffeine allowance. Because they were in cans the regulator gave them a choice: change the package, or get your product banned since it isn't resealable and shouldn't be consumed in one go.
The result: Every company started producing 32oz cans with lids
https://www.packagingdigest.co... [packagingdigest.com]
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I love that the Ball Corp front page has a link for "packaging" and "aerospace".
buying water (Score:4, Informative)
I'm more concerned that we've now been conditioned to having to buy water in bottles when it's one of the most abundant substances on Earth. It represents a failure of the imagination and the triumph pf profits-over-people. Corporations pollute available water and then say, "Oh, you can still have clean water, you'll just have to pay us for it by the bottle now, and on top of that, we'll sell it to you in bottles made of petroleum-based substances so you can have even more pollution and need to pay us for even more stuff. #Winning."
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I'm more concerned that we've now been conditioned to having to buy water in bottles when it's one of the most abundant substances on Earth.
You're free to drink all the sea water you like. It's *incredibly* abundant. *Potable* drinking water, on the other hand, can be remarkably rare in nature. If you can find a glacier-fed river you're lucky. Otherwise you have to take a chance on a spring-fed river that can be laced with heavy metals, or a pond or lake that can harbor toxic algae.
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Yes, this is one of the reasons that there is no animal life on Earth.
Potability (Score:3)
Yes, this is one of the reasons that there is no animal life on Earth.
There is what animals will drink to keep themselves alive, then there is what the citizens of developed nations consider "potable" drinking water. The requirements are quite a bit different. We demand no trace of heavy metals or bacteria in our water supply. Naturally occurring aquifers with these specifications are pretty rare.
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What's rare is the will to stand up to corporations and the understanding in government that supplying clean drinking water to the population should be one of the core functions of government.
If you're in the US, Canada or Europe that responsibility falls into 3 areas: State. Local(municipality/city). Federal(governed by treaties). Looks like clean drinking water is already covered in that. And if you're thinking "omg Flint, MI!" keep in mind that the problem was created by NEW regulations on cleaning pipes either by energizing the water system or pumping cleaning agents through. Which of course ripped the mineral layer off the inside of the pipes and allowed lead leeching.
It's at least as much a core function as foreign wars or building a fucking wall.
Keeping in mind tha
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Clean water is a national security issue. Aquifers, rivers, lakes do not respect state or municipal borders. The ecosystem doesn't care about your "Welcome to Indiana" sign.
Ensuring clean water for US citizens is a core function of government. At all levels, but starting from the top. This is enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, in case you care about things like that.
Re: buying water (Score:2)
"Ensuring clean water for US citizens is a core function of government."
And that is why it's handled at the local level. The EPA sets the limits for contaminants, and how to get the water to that quality is up to the local water department.
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Most people are buying the container, not the water. It's a handy way to have water where/when you need it.
Yes, yes, we should all use glass instead. But, if you run the numbers, the breakeven number of reuses is quite high given the higher cost of mfg, shipping, collecting, cleaning, and shipping again. Perhaps higher than the median life of those glass bottles.
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Most people are buying the container, not the water.
No, no they are not. Otherwise they wouldn't be called "disposable bottles". And they wouldn't be made of plastic. (Excluding nalgene, I guess)
I bought my container almost a decade ago. I still use it daily. It's an aluminum bottle I fill at the water fountain. My state, like most states, has abundant, fresh, clean water. I can (and sometimes do) download a quarterly water report showing all the minerals and contaminants that I'm drinking. I know what I'm drinking is better than what 99% of humans in histor
Trendy plebs use plastic bottles. (Score:3)
The thing to use is a vacuum-insulated steel bottle. Lasts years, and will keep cold cold and hot hot.
No one needs to know what's in my bottle. Could be tap, could be s. pellegrino, could be brandy, could be single-malt.
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Evian spelled backward is "naive" (Score:3)
Just burn it! (Score:2)
The solution to recycling plastic is DON'T
The solution to plastic in landfils and our oceans is don't put it there.
The right answer is to collect it! Use a deposit to get people to actually return it. Once returned burn it in a waste to energy facility, with proper high temperature combustion and flue-gas remediation its not going to be a whole lot worse than oil plants and probably still cleaner than a coal plant.
It gets rid of the waste and produces useful electricity. Now I am not saying do this to the
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because landfill space is actually quite limited and expensive. Modern landfills are NOT just a big pits you know. They are lined so the stuff that is decomposing does not go directly into the water table and elsewhere. That process is expensive. Things that don't degrade cause the landfill to fill faster.
Why does it need to be recycled? (Score:3, Interesting)
If we bury the used plastic bottles in landfills, we're just sequestering that carbon back underground. If the plastic is virtually impossible for bacteria to biodegrade, that means it won't be converted into methane or CO2 by bacteria in the landfill, thus guaranteeing that the carbon remains sequestered underground. Where it originally came from.
People have become so conditioned to the idea that "recycling is good for the Earth!", that they no longer stop to think about when recycling might be unnecessary. If, as environmentalists wish, we stop using oil for fuel, then that will mean there will be plenty of oil left to manufacture plastics. So rather than waste a lot of extra energy sorting it and recycling it, just put it back underground where we originally got it from. Use new oil to make new plastics.
The problem is plastics which don't end up in landfills, and instead end up littering our streets, wilderness, rivers, and oceans. So it's pointless requiring companies to come up with new ways to recycle plastic when the problem is the plastic isn't collected in the first place - you can't recycle what isn't collected. All you need to solve the disposal problem is to increase the deposit on each bottle, to encourage the buyer to properly disposes of it after use.
A deposit also encourages homeless and low income people to collect and disposes of bottles which were thrown away improperly. If you think about it, bottle deposits are a way to give financial assistance to these people at zero cost to the government. It's paid for by people who choose to throw their bottles and cans away on the ground, instead of taking them to a collection center. Deposits are win-win-win, with the only losers being people who litter.
Re:Why does it need to be recycled? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the problems with getting rid of recycling is that - absent any other action - we'll still be using plastics. So dumping plastics in the ground still means that we're extracting oil to turn into plastic. Plus, plastics tend to find their way into our oceans where they then break down into microscopic particles and enter the food chain. (Not in a "broken down into components" sense, but in an "ingested and poison/kill animals" sense.)
The proper thing to do is use all 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, not just Recycle on its own. First, we need to reduce how much plastic we use. This might mean making bottles out of something other than plastic. Second, we need to reuse. For example, when you get a plastic grocery bag (if you're not using a canvas one), then use it for other purposes instead of just tossing it. Finally, the remaining plastic that is used, should be recycled so that we don't need as much new plastic.
There seems to be too much of a reliance on Recycle and not enough on Reduce and Reuse.
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So dumping plastics in the ground still means that we're extracting oil to turn into plastic.
In our entire history we've never extracted oil to be turned into plastic. We've extracted oil to be turned into fuel with the byproducts turned into plastic. We've also extracted oil specifically separated polyxylene out of it for plastic and then turned the rest into fuel however this is problematic since you need to treat the oil and rich condensate doesn't fetch much on the open market since most refineries are designed to run crude.
Overall the plastic lifecycle has never had an impact on the oil we get
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That's exactly the m
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If the plastic is virtually impossible for bacteria to biodegrade, that means it won't be converted into methane or CO2 by bacteria in the landfill, thus guaranteeing that the carbon remains sequestered underground. Where it originally came from.
It's only a matter of time before a strain of bacteria evolves to eat some of the simpler plastics and then the more complex ones too. It would be wise to isolate plastics and makes them into a large monolithic bricks as minimize the surface area exposure. If someone put their mind to it, with the assistance of automation, such a bacteria could be evolved in a decade.
Douches (Score:3)
I'll probably get modded down for this, but anyone who drinks bottled water where there are other easy alternatives is a huge, lazy douchebag. Bottled water should be reserved only for times when finding an acceptable alternative is difficult...day at the beach, long bike ride, etc. And even then it's not difficult to put some filtered water in a canteen before you leave.
Hell, there's really only one REAL reason I can think of to buy bottled water and that's to put in your SHTF supply cache if you have one. This is a problem that is very easily solved by not being so freaking lazy.
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I have a Nalgene water bottle that I use. Yes, technically, it's plastic, but I use this bottle and refill it multiple times each day. When it's dirty, it goes in the dishwasher and comes out clean to be used again. Eventually, I'm sure it'll go in the recycling bin, but not before being refilled and reused thousands of times.
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I'll probably get modded down for this, but anyone who drinks bottled water where there are other easy alternatives is a huge, lazy douchebag.
That’s why I only drink bourbon - I’m doing it for the planet.
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Your sacrifice makes you a beacon of selflessness in these troubled times. I think I shall follow your example, but with Scotch. It is typically aged in barrels that have already been used.
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You, sir, are an inspiration for the children.
Why not just ban bottled water? (Score:2)
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Because it still has a purpose. Water from your tap is great if your tap water is safe. (I have been drinking nothing but bottled water for the past week on my holiday for fear of hell's own diarrhea. Hell I even washed fruit this morning using bottled water.
Even in the first world water from the tap is great only if you're near a tap.
Comes in Boxes (Score:4, Informative)
At least one USA company is already selling water in a box [boxedwaterisbetter.com]. It's not a matter of coming up with something better, it is a matter of slapping a tax or a deposit on something that is undesirable.
Is this about _plastic_ or just litter? (Score:3)
Since it doesn't decompose, plastic appears to be more plentiful that other forms of garbage that have the good grace to disappear from sight (either dissolving into the ground, being eaten by bugs or being exhausted from vehicles), even though it represents just as much un-recycled resource.
It is even possible that it has nothing to do with either and is just a backlash against obvious consumerism. Whatever the real reason for all the hate against plastics - surely the most useful class of material ever invented - I feel that if / when the protesters get their way, they will simply turn their wrath against something else.
You Sell It--You Buy Container Back! (Score:2)
Drinkable water. From a tap! (Score:2)
The easiest way to solve the problem... (Score:2)
These things are evil (Score:5, Interesting)