The Container Recycling Institute says overall beverage container recycling has dropped from 53.5 percent in 1992 to 33.5 percent in 2004.
The institute calculates that if we were to go on a national campaign to increase beverage container recycling to 80 percent, the savings in greenhouse gas production would be the equivalent of taking 2.4 million cars off the road for a year. It says if the recycling content of plastic beverage bottles was 25 percent, that would save enough crude oil to electrify 680,000 American homes for a year.
The title of this diary is a line from legendary bluesman Howlin' Wolf, and it is quoted in the first line of Derrick Jackson's op ed this morning entitled Tapped out. Perhaps you might want to keep reading?
Between 2002 and 2005 Americans increased their use of personal sized bottled water 13 billion bottles to nearly 28 billion bottles, making our share of the world consumption 17%. And yet there are few places in the US where the tap water is not potable - we do not have the problem - so endemic in much of the world (Mexico City, anyone?) - of water that might get you sick. And in fact much of the bottled water we buy IS tap water. Water, like many non-carbonated drinks, is packaged largely in bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), of which Jackson notes
- it is made from petroleum (hence the Howlin' Wolf line)
- only 14.5% of the bottles for non-carbonated drinks are recycled
- this puts 2 million tons into our landfills
- the bottles do not degrade for hundreds of years
Some individual mayors are taking action: for example Mayor Gavin Newsome has banned bottled water in city offices, and the U. S. Conference of mayors is apparently moving in a similar direction, which of course immediately brings them into conflict with the International Bottled Water Association, which
cried that Newsom was depriving city employees of a healthy drink that "does not contain calories, caffeine, sugar, artificial flavors or colors, alcohol and other ingredients."
Talk about crying and howling wolf. By far, the two fastest-growing individual "liquid refreshment" brands in the United States, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, are Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani. Both are bottled waters. Both are municipal water!
Jackson notes that prorated to the gallon, such individual bottles of water come to about $10/gallon, and ends his column as follows:
The next time you ask the waitress for bottled water, remember it costs more than gasoline.
I fully expect that there will be readers of this diary who will take offense at what I have posted. Perhaps you insist your bottled water is different, not from the tap, or that it comes in a glass container, or that regardless of the container you recycle (does the restaurant where you order it?). I am not here to pick a major fight.
We Americans are used to convenience. We drive 200 yards from one end to the other of a strip mall, with A/C on full blast so that we don't ahve to walk in the heat. And so long as we can afford it, we rarely think about the accumulated direct costs of that convenience,much less the indirect costs such as the increase of our carbon footprint, or the natural resources lost or polluted by the packaging. I acknowledge I am guilty of all of the above. In sharing this column by Jackson (and as usually I urge you to read the entire thing), I am as much challenging myself as I am anyone else.
The challenge? Begin to change my destructive habits of convenience. Think about both direct and indirect costs of the consumer choices I make.
And one more thing - if I want to drink water, get a reusable bottle and fill it from the tap. That's easy enough for me to do.
What about you?