Ban the Bottle
Hmmmmm..... until today, I had not heard that San Francisco has banned sales of bottled water.
Not because of the drought out there.
But because of the negative environmental impact.
Read:
And, here's an opinion piece from the Denver Post, encouraging Colorado to do the same:
According to https://www.banthebottle.net/, these are 3 key pieces of info when it comes to their efforts to ban sales of bottled water:
-- In the United States, 24 percent of bottled water sold is either Pepsi’s Aquafina (13 percent of the market) or Coke’s Dasani (11 percent of the market). Both brands are bottled, purified municipal water.
(so folks are paying inflated prices for nothing more than tap water)
-- Last year, the average American used 167 disposable water bottles, but only recycled 38.
(167 per American? like 14 per month? that seems high to me, but I guess if you average the heavy users with the non-users, 167 may make sense)
-- Americans used about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year. However, the U.S.’s recycling rate for plastic is only 23 percent, which means 38 billion water bottles – more than $1 billion worth of plastic – are wasted each year.
(yes, America's poor recycling efforts really suck)
I consider all 3 of these these "good to know" facts. Without question, people most definitely need to focus on recycling.
And I consider "Ban the Bottle" a noteworthy effort. Drinking from refillable plastic containers (Camelbak, Tervis, Nalgene, etc.) instead of turning to a new plastic bottle every time is a valuable exercise.
However...... seriously folks, our world is not going to hell because of bottled water.
Plastic bottles just don't come close to mattering when there is stuff like hatred, prejudice, racism, famine, food shortages, war, greed, corrupt government, slavery, injustice, persecution, etc. etc. rampant on this planet.
Ditto for plastic bags.
Ditto for "microbeads". (see this MattChat post: http://matthonnold.blogspot.com/2014/04/soap-beads.html)
So, anyone for styrofoam? HA
Out for now.......
Matt
