United States is the largest consumer of bottled water and since water bottles are made of a type of plastic which is difficult to break down, 86% of the bottles become garbage. Landfill clogging by these bottles became a major issue and many city councils took action by banning the bottles in government meetings, replacing them with water pitchers and drinking fountains. Restaurants too joined in, encouraging the use of tap water.
The environmentalists started a campaign and the bottled water industry reacted by releasing advertisements. On radio programs, the bottled water industry spokesmen argued that the issue is consumer choice; if a consumer has the freedom to eat a mango grown in Philippines, he also has the freedom to drink San Pellegrino.
After all that initial posturing the bottled water industry is now trying to accommodate the environmentalists, so that they are not seen on the wrong side in this issue. The solution they came up did not make the bottle disappear, but made it eco friendly by featuring smaller labels and bottles made with less plastic.
The present trend is growing environmental awareness among private businesses to make up for unenthusiastic stance of the Bush Administration. Buying from farmers market is popular and Low Carbon diet is the new mantra. The rising popularity of the environmental movement has recognition among politicians on both sides of the aisle and nothing says it better than this advertisment.
Landfill clogging by these bottles became a major issue
Are you sure or were you bitten by the mallu anti-corporate bug? The wikipedia article on recycling says :
Regarding the claim that the U.S. is running out of landfill space, Tierney wrote, “A. Clark Wiseman, an economist at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., has calculated that if Americans keep generating garbage at current rates for 1,000 years, and if all their garbage is put in a landfill 100 yards deep, by the year 3000 this national garbage heap will fill a square piece of land 35 miles on each side. This doesn’t seem a huge imposition in a country the size of America. The garbage would occupy only 5 percent of the area needed for the national array of solar panels proposed by environmentalists. The millennial landfill would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the range land now available for grazing in the continental United States
@froginthewell,
The question is not if there is enough landfill or not, but that some portion of these pastic bottles are non recycleable resulting in clogging the existing ones. Yes, you could dig around America and create more landfills, but the policy is not to go that route.
Thanks for clarifying that, JK; I hadn’t thought of that.
However I still don’t know whether the correct approach is to let Government have control over landfills and dictate to companies how much waste they can generate – as long as land isn’t scarce.