The Fire

Few days ago it was cloudy and drowsy, and now its hottt like fire outside. Seems like everything is beginning to climb: gas prices, rice prices! (from $25 to $40-50!), and the temperature. Gas prices... I can deal with, but if rice continues to climb... I have no idea what I'll be eating for dinner everyday. I can't imagine an alternative to rice. Hopefully rice prices will not continue to go up for all our sakes.

The hot temperatures got me thinking about water, water and more water. Especially the ongoing debate over plastic water bottles and how we are so inefficient in recycling them. I came across a really good video animation on how much we do not recycle. We always talk about it but no one really takes it seriously. Hopefully a visual will help put things into perspective.




For more information on the author of the video you can visit here: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~djames/bottledWater/

We should all start thinking for alternatives to water bottles and pick up some re-usable bottles. Drinking water from filtration or tap actually saves you significantly more money than purchasing water bottles everyday. The resources put into making and distributing a water bottle is ridiculous. Many bottles are "bottled at the source" hundreds of miles away from us. That means they are shipped here across the ocean in big ships and distributed to us by large trucks, each of which use enormous amounts of oil and emits lots of pollution. An example of one company is in Helsinki, Finland, which in 2004 shipped 1.4 million bottles of Finnish tap water to Saudi Arabia—2,700 miles (4,300 kilometers) away.


Could the plastic in water bottles pose a health risk?

Recent research suggests that there could be cause for concern, and that the issue should be studied closely. Studies have shown that chemicals called phthalates, which are known to disrupt testosterone and other hormones, can leach into bottled water over time. One study found that water that had been stored for 10 weeks in plastic and in glass bottles contained phthalates, suggesting that the chemicals could be coming from the plastic cap or liner. Although there are regulatory standards limiting phthalates in tap water, there are no legal limits for phthalates in bottled water -- the bottled water industry waged a successful campaign opposing the FDA proposal to set a legal limit for these chemicals.


FACTS:

About 86 percent of plastic water bottles in the U.S. become garbage or litter, according to the Container Recycling Institute in Washington, D.C.

Plastic debris in the environment can take between 400 and 1,000 years to degrade.

"Making bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year,"

Plastic bottles take 700 years before they begin to decompose in a landfill.

"Fun"

Alternative

Better?

We can try to use re-usable bottles but we'd have to buy a new bottle every few months. Nalgene has a good re-usable bottle out on the market but it is constructed by poly-carbonate plastic which overtime breaks down and enters your water.

Better plastics are high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) or simply stainless-steel bottles. But if you're still into Nalgene's indestructible polycarbonate bottles than you should look into replacing them every few months.

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