Movies, Books, Politicians the Water Bottle is Under Siege

Bring a plastic water bottle to your own demise; the tide of social view is turning against you. From top rating documentaries, to articles and political debate, the red hot topic on the soapbox is the problem of bottled water and the waste of resources that the industry pumps out.

The producing, moving and waste of water in petrochemical plastic bottles eats up tremendous amounts of water along with energy, and produces ridiculous measures 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 Tapped crew are promoting the film with their across-America roadshow, asking donations from donors to reduce their water bottle abuse and changing their discarded 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. From Annie Leonard of the famous ‘The Story of Stuff’, this animated film explores the method that is used to conning Americans into purchasing at least half a billion bottles of water each and every week, despite the option of a few cents cost for water from the tap. Find the short film on You Tube.

In her book ‘Bottlemania’, author Elizabeth Royte explores one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth century and demands a super environmental alarm bell. She details the situations we must eventually respond to. Who distributes the water distribution? What will happen when a bottled-water corporation holds your town’s water source? Is the water coming from a tap absolutely safe? What is really the environmental price of making, transporting and waste of a single plastic water bottle?

Politicians from around the international community are acknowledging that they are required to take responsibility for action – notably when the buildings at which they collate are high consumers of bottled water. How often do we see a politician at a press conference drinking from a water bottle. It is probable that they must be able to find 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 from Australia to prevent the selling of bottled water. Around 60 cities in the States and some in Canada and the United Kingdom have at this point prevented the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on bottled water.

No doubt 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 environment’s most urgent water-related problems.

Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores.