Getting the genie back into the (water) bottle

Posted on Thursday, March 3, 2011Point of View
By Neale McDevit, editor of the McGill Reporter

...“one-and-done” reality of bottled water should be an affront to anyone who takes sustainability issues seriously.
It is estimated that the U.S. – despite boasting one of the world’s safest and most accessible public water sources – produces and discards some 50 billion plastic water bottles every year with only 23 per cent actually making it to recycling plants. The rest become landfill. And those bottles, primarily made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, will take upwards of 1,000 years to disintegrate, leeching potentially harmful substances back into the earth along the way.

And lest we Canadians get too smug, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada reports that annual grocery sales of bottled water, apart from those for the big 18 litre water dispensers, grew 65 per cent between 2003 and 2006, from a value of $264 million in 2004 to just under $437 million. Read more...