Once in while I will hear a story that makes me proud . . .
that is until I complete the story and I slap myself in the forehead.
Today I was scanning through a recent Economist magazine and
a small story read: “The consumption of carbonated soft drinks in America fell
to a 16-year low in 2011” Even though the average per person consumption still
worked out to something ridiculous like 16oz a day, I felt a moment of
confidence for human race heading in a positive direction.
And then I read that we replaced Coke with a large increase
in water bottle consumption. In a country with a never ending supply of FREE
filtered (and SAFE) drinking water available almost everywhere, we still manage
to be stupid enough to pay for, and waste billions of “one-use” plastic
bottles.
Fail.
p.s. 16 million gallons of oil were used last year just to make plastic water bottles. That doesn't include transportation which would more than double that number.
Why haven't they banned plastic disposable water bottles already? Or put on a crazy tax so they're super inconvenient. The story behind the water sources, also, can be horrible.
ReplyDeleteI was reading about a town in which the water was being bottled and taken away, but the people in the village didn't even have access to clean drinking water. Disgusting, eh?