Slashdot Mirror
Plastic Water Bottles, Which Enabled a Drinks Boom, Now Threaten a Crisis (wsj.com)
Bottled water, which recently dethroned soda as America's most popular beverage, is facing a crisis. From a report: A consumer backlash against disposable plastic plus new government mandates and bans in places such as zoos and department stores have the world's biggest bottled-water makers scrambling to find alternatives. Evian this year pledged to make all its plastic bottles entirely from recycled plastic by 2025, up from 30% today and among the boldest goals in the industry. Executives at parent company Danone hope the move will help it regain market share and win over plastic detractors who are already pressuring the makers of straws, bags and coffee cups.
There's a big problem. The industry has tried and failed for years to make a better bottle. Existing recycling technology needs clean, clear plastic to make new water bottles, and bottled-water companies say low recycling rates and a lack of infrastructure have stymied supply. Danone, for its part, is betting the reputation of its flagship water brand on a new technology that claims to turn old plastic from things like dirty carpets and sticky ketchup bottles into plastic suitable for new water bottles. [...] Bottled-water sales have boomed in recent decades amid safety fears about tap water and a shift away from sugary drinks. Between 1994 and 2017, U.S. consumption soared 284% to nearly 42 gallons a year per person, according to Beverage Marketing Corp., a consulting firm. Further reading: Microplastics Found In 93 Percent of Bottled Water Tested In Global Study, and Amazon Wants To Curb Selling 'CRaP' Items it Can't Profit On, Like Bottled Water and Snacks: Report.
There's a big problem. The industry has tried and failed for years to make a better bottle. Existing recycling technology needs clean, clear plastic to make new water bottles, and bottled-water companies say low recycling rates and a lack of infrastructure have stymied supply. Danone, for its part, is betting the reputation of its flagship water brand on a new technology that claims to turn old plastic from things like dirty carpets and sticky ketchup bottles into plastic suitable for new water bottles. [...] Bottled-water sales have boomed in recent decades amid safety fears about tap water and a shift away from sugary drinks. Between 1994 and 2017, U.S. consumption soared 284% to nearly 42 gallons a year per person, according to Beverage Marketing Corp., a consulting firm. Further reading: Microplastics Found In 93 Percent of Bottled Water Tested In Global Study, and Amazon Wants To Curb Selling 'CRaP' Items it Can't Profit On, Like Bottled Water and Snacks: Report.
Use a deposit. Every can costs you 50 cents more which you'll get back upon return.
Works like a charm in other countries.
We Swiss are even dumb enough to recycle without deposits, silly us.
And if worse comes to worst, use aluminum cans! Beverages taste better from those anyhow...
We used to use glass bottles for milk, soda, and other beverages. They were returned, cleaned, and refilled instead of recycled. Refilling uses less energy then destroying and recreating.
Its piped into my house and costs pennies a gallon. Good luck finding a public water fountain these days.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Aluminum cans are easy to make from recycled cans, tend to get recycled more, and are more compact per volume of liquid than plastic bottles.
Hell, I'm seeing soda makers moving from cans to bottles more; this seems counterproductive. Just keep using aluminum cans!
I'm more concerned that we've now been conditioned to having to buy water in bottles when it's one of the most abundant substances on Earth. It represents a failure of the imagination and the triumph pf profits-over-people. Corporations pollute available water and then say, "Oh, you can still have clean water, you'll just have to pay us for it by the bottle now, and on top of that, we'll sell it to you in bottles made of petroleum-based substances so you can have even more pollution and need to pay us for even more stuff. #Winning."
You are welcome on my lawn.
The thing to use is a vacuum-insulated steel bottle. Lasts years, and will keep cold cold and hot hot.
No one needs to know what's in my bottle. Could be tap, could be s. pellegrino, could be brandy, could be single-malt.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Evian spelled backward is "naive", but you already knew that, right? BTW: Who's drinking my share of the 42 gal/year? My water gets tested twice a day. I call it "tap water".
Water bottles are made from plastic. Plastic is made from oil. Oil comes from the ground. The excess carbon in the oil we pump up from the ground is becoming CO2 when the oil is burned, causing our climate problems
If we bury the used plastic bottles in landfills, we're just sequestering that carbon back underground. If the plastic is virtually impossible for bacteria to biodegrade, that means it won't be converted into methane or CO2 by bacteria in the landfill, thus guaranteeing that the carbon remains sequestered underground. Where it originally came from.
People have become so conditioned to the idea that "recycling is good for the Earth!", that they no longer stop to think about when recycling might be unnecessary. If, as environmentalists wish, we stop using oil for fuel, then that will mean there will be plenty of oil left to manufacture plastics. So rather than waste a lot of extra energy sorting it and recycling it, just put it back underground where we originally got it from. Use new oil to make new plastics.
The problem is plastics which don't end up in landfills, and instead end up littering our streets, wilderness, rivers, and oceans. So it's pointless requiring companies to come up with new ways to recycle plastic when the problem is the plastic isn't collected in the first place - you can't recycle what isn't collected. All you need to solve the disposal problem is to increase the deposit on each bottle, to encourage the buyer to properly disposes of it after use.
A deposit also encourages homeless and low income people to collect and disposes of bottles which were thrown away improperly. If you think about it, bottle deposits are a way to give financial assistance to these people at zero cost to the government. It's paid for by people who choose to throw their bottles and cans away on the ground, instead of taking them to a collection center. Deposits are win-win-win, with the only losers being people who litter.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but anyone who drinks bottled water where there are other easy alternatives is a huge, lazy douchebag. Bottled water should be reserved only for times when finding an acceptable alternative is difficult...day at the beach, long bike ride, etc. And even then it's not difficult to put some filtered water in a canteen before you leave.
Hell, there's really only one REAL reason I can think of to buy bottled water and that's to put in your SHTF supply cache if you have one. This is a problem that is very easily solved by not being so freaking lazy.
What? Six row and two row barley are both available everywhere.
Most european beer is made with six row barley, two row barley is the realm of craft beers.
Rice and corn sugar are tasteless alcohol adders. Also anything containing rice or corn is NOT BEER.
Have you ever made a single batch of homebrew? I doubt it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
At least one USA company is already selling water in a box. It's not a matter of coming up with something better, it is a matter of slapping a tax or a deposit on something that is undesirable.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Since it doesn't decompose, plastic appears to be more plentiful that other forms of garbage that have the good grace to disappear from sight (either dissolving into the ground, being eaten by bugs or being exhausted from vehicles), even though it represents just as much un-recycled resource.
It is even possible that it has nothing to do with either and is just a backlash against obvious consumerism. Whatever the real reason for all the hate against plastics - surely the most useful class of material ever invented - I feel that if / when the protesters get their way, they will simply turn their wrath against something else.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
because landfill space is actually quite limited and expensive. Modern landfills are NOT just a big pits you know. They are lined so the stuff that is decomposing does not go directly into the water table and elsewhere. That process is expensive. Things that don't degrade cause the landfill to fill faster.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Yes, this is one of the reasons that there is no animal life on Earth.
There is what animals will drink to keep themselves alive, then there is what the citizens of developed nations consider "potable" drinking water. The requirements are quite a bit different. We demand no trace of heavy metals or bacteria in our water supply. Naturally occurring aquifers with these specifications are pretty rare.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I live in Belgium. If you add cherries, is it still beer?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I work at an award-winning landfill. My county encourages recycling and makes it easy to do. That said, plastic water bottles...heck, plastic bottles of any kind are the third worst pollutant, in my opinion. The blow around and last practically forever. The second worst is Styrofoam. You have no idea. At least it eventually disintegrates into tiny little beads, not that those are great but at least they can't be seen. The worst is plastic bags/plastic wraps of all sorts but especially plastic shopping bags. These things blow everywhere eventually become brittle from UV exposure but never truly deteriorate. Solutions? Huge deposit fees, like half the cost of the product. Two dollars for a bottle of water? Make that three but you get a dollar back when you return the bottle. Plastic bags? Similar concept. Dollar a bag, for example, refundable upon return of the bag. Styrofoam? Cellulose packing peanuts that dissolve in water already exist. Let's ramp up that technology and eliminate Styrofoam.