Here’s The Story of Bottled Water; a brief look at how drinks manufacturers managed to convince us to pay for bottled water.
So in honor of World Water Day say “No!” to bottled water, grab a reusable bottle and home water filter, and lobby your local government to invest in our public water infrastructure.
On Saturday Plastiki, a boat made of 12,000 plastic bottles, set sail from San Francisco on its 11,000 mile voyage to Australia. Plastiki is a unique 60 ft catamaran made of post-consumer recycled plastic bottles and other recycled plastic materials. The main purpose of the voyage is to raise awareness of marine pollution.
On its route Plastiki will sail across the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive sea of rubbish floating just below the ocean surface between California and Hawaii. Stretching over an area the size of the continental US, the Garbage Patch is estimated to contain up to 100 million tones of trash. Most of the refuse consists of small particles, held in suspension just below the water’s surface. It is therefore hard to depict the scale of the problem with a simple photograph, so research together with high profile voyages like Plastiki’s are needed.
You can track the crews’ progress here; and read their blog guilt free, as their laptops are powered by an exercise bike.
http://www.theplastiki.com/trackplastiki/
(This page has “Fact: Roughly 50% of all plastic products end up in the ocean”. This seems very high to me – I can’t imagine a mechanism that would allow so much plastic would get from our landfills to the sea. Perhaps they mean 50% of all marine refuse is plastic. If anyone finds a source let us know in the comments)
I have recently been hearing a lot of news about UK Company Belu, who have developed a fully biodegradable bottle for water. The raw material for the bottles is corn, after undergoing a fermentation and distillation process. The end result is a bottle that is effectively grown, that feels and looks just like the regular plastic water bottles that line our supermarket chains, convenience stores and, of course, our garbage dumps.
Belu also made the production of the bottles carbon neutral in 2006 and even donates the profits to projects that deliver clean water to parts of the world that lack access to it. As a non profit organisation with such impeccable green credentials, it has seen some very strong growth in its sales. From a base of $13,000 in 2006, its launch year, it just came off the back of a $4 million year in 2008.
The corn used to make the bottles can be grown in 100 days. It can be broken down by commercial composting methods in 12 weeks, and by home composting in about a year. Therefore, there is the potential to grow the corn, make the bottles and return them to raw bio mass to the soil in under 200 days, a pretty awesome example of nature in action. Nothing created or destroyed, but a massive and rapid form transformation.
A selection of Belu biodegradable bottles
The US alone uses 1.5 million barrels of oil each year to make water bottles from polyethylene terephthalate. The vast majority of which are landfilled or incinerated. It would be great if we could simply shake our bottled water habit, but there are situations where a bottle is required so Belu’s bottles are an important innovation. Furthermore, donating all profits to water projects such as WaterAid is truly a noble action. It’s yet another example of the growing trend of social enterprises that shun monetary profit in aid of a greater social purpose. We wish them the best of luck.
