Business Podcasting Blog

Bring a plastic water bottle to your own hazard; the wave of popular belief is turning on you. From high rating documentaries, to the written word and political campaigns, the hottest issue on the soapbox is the problem of bottled water and the waste that the industry demonstrates.

The producing, moving and waste of water in petrochemical plastic bottles requires big quantities of water as well as energy, and pumps out ridiculous amounts of greenhouse gases and waste.

Director of the upcoming documentary ‘Tapped: get off the bottle’ Stephanie Soechtig says “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 of Tapped are promoting the film with their across-America roadshow, collecting money from donors to reduce their water bottle abuse and exchanging their empty plastic water bottle 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. Created by Annie Leonard of the well-received ‘The Story of Stuff’, this short animation displays the strategy that amounts to conning Americans into purchasing over hundreds of millions of bottles of water every week, instead of a few cents cost for clean tap water. Check out the short film on You Tube.

With her book ‘Bottlemania’, writer Elizabeth Royte demonstrates one of the most massive marketing takeovers of the last century and gives a strong environmental alarm bell. She explores the situations we must eventually understand. Who distributes the water supply? What can happen when a bottled-water factory possesses your town’s source? Is the water that comes from your tap absolutely safe? What really is the environmental factor of producing, transportation and disposal of every plastic water bottle?

Politicians from all around the world are beginning to realise that they need to start the campaign – markedly when the institutions at which they debate are major consumers of bottled water. How often do we witness a politician at a meeting sipping from a water bottle. Surely they can find a water glass in Parliament House.

Leslie Samuelrich of Corporate Accountability International, claimed “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 prohibited the retail of bottled water. Around 60 towns in the States and a handful in Canada and the United Kingdom have now stopped expending taxpayer money on bottled water.

Surely this dilemma will be debated during World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the environment’s most current water-related events.

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