The Concord Monitor editorial page weighs in on the scourge of plastic water bottles, and why you're a bad person for using them, especially Fiji brand.
Habitual consumption of bottled water is a waste of money - much of what's sold is just filtered tap water. It's also a source of landfill waste. An estimated 60 million plastic bottles are dumped in landfills every day, according to the San Francisco magazine The Guardsman. Drinking bottled water also wastes fuel, not just diesel oil used to run Fiji Water's bottling plant and power freighters, but the 1.5 million barrels of oil it takes to make a one-year supply of plastic water bottles. But when the bottled water comes from an aquifer in Fiji, it's also indirectly helping to prop up a tyrant.
When you buy bottled water, you're not paying for the water. You're paying for the bottle. It's the convenience and portability of a clean, cool, portioned drink of water, without having to haul around a canteen.
By the Monitor's logic, you shouldn't buy a bottle of Diet Coke or orange juice either. Just pour some out of the big bottle in your fridge into your thermos every morning. Come to think of it, all those Dunkin Donuts cups are pretty wasteful, too. Brew a big pot of coffee (Fair Trade only please) and stash it in your car. And why use all that extra packaging when you go through the drive-through? Pack a lunch and save the planet.
I'm not saying these are bad choices. I brown-bag it quite often, and I like to fill a travel mug with coffee before I head to the office. But those are my choices to make, not the Concord Monitor's.
The scourge of bottled water? Somehow, I feel a tax coming on.
ReplyDelete