DRINK LOCAL WATER!
This is not a tongue-twister exercise. It's about Cool, Clear WATER. [Water!] Listen to the Sons of the Pioneers sing this song written by Bob Nolan in 1941 here! [Thank you, YouTube!]
As another song goes, "I read the news today, oh boy...." This morning's Providence Journal story about Rhode Island's bottle bill hearing (April 24, 2008) got me thinking,
Why do people spend their good money buying bottled water?
It would be worth having bottled water in, say, a Katrina-type disaster when the public drinking water supplies are not safe. But today we have perfectly fine tap water in Rhode Island that costs next to nothing. With gas prices zooming up past $3.50 a gallon, why are so many folks going into Rhode Island markets and buying bottles of water that must be transported hundreds of miles from places like Maine, and even thousands of miles from places like France? When did we get brain-bottle washed into thinking that it is cooler and healthier to DRIVE to the store, LOAD up the cart with 12-packs of water, PAY hard-earned money, WHEEL them out to the car, LUG them into the house, and then THROW them into the trash?
I will remind readers again
that these bottles are seldom recycled but go as trash to the Central
Landfill in Johnston, which can be seen from hills in Providence ten
miles away, the landfill itself being a significant hill in this state
with a highest point of 812 feet. We see the bottles rolling around in the road until they are flattened by cars. The water bottles (and of course the other beverage containers ~ but I'm just on a roll about water bottles today) are in the shrubs, in the woods, in the waterways, on the beaches.
Why do so many businesses and conferences pay for the above-described lugging of water bottles? Why do our local restaurants, in this day and age of emphasizing eating local food, sell imported bottled water? Why do we order bottled water in a restaurant? How did it get to be the better option to buy bottled water? What are we thinking?
My Pitcher Pitch
Bottle bills have been throttled at the State House for years, and each side argues passionately for and against refunds on returned bottles. I see the Projo has a SURVEY today on the bottle bill question and provides the text of the current bill . Whatever your view on this important question, though, Rhode Island does need to achieve much higher recycling rates on beverage containers.
"Most R.I. municipal recycling rates are less than 15 percent." ~ RI Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC)
There are so many pros and cons in the bottle recycling arguments, and I'm not going into all of the permutations here, but why not simply go back to drinking tap water and using pitchers and cups or glasses? Why not pitcher in?
- Think about it. Why do you drink bottled water? Are bottles of water the only way to have water at a meeting? You say your business is green? But is your company buying bottled water?
- Bottle bill or no bottle bill, just because they sell it, we don't have to buy it. Just say NO. Don't buy bottled water. Especially at work or when you are out and about, find some other way to supply drinking water to the troops. Be the first to bring your own water mug to the committee meeting this afternoon, and don't reach for one of those bottles somebody put in the middle of the table today.
- Hold "PITCHER INs." Use pitchers and paper cups (or, gasp, glasses) ~ something recyclable, washable, or biodegradable. At least put pitchers of water out for the folks.
And back to those bottles~ it has to become "cool" to recycle water bottles. Rhode Island should be the best at recycling! Especially businesses, which to date have a TERRIBLE recycling rate. RIRRC has help for starting business recycling programs. But we'd have less to recycle is we just drank tap water and put out pitchers and cups at meetings.
Do you have some pitcher pi'tures? I was inspired this morning to get my little collection of water pitchers out and to photograph them in the early sunlight, but I'm not a pro. Let's start a collection of water pitcher pi'tures and a list of local businesses that do NOT buy bottled water, and another list of local restaurants that do NOT sell bottled water.
Please add comments, circulate, forward, and link to this post, and let's just stop buying bottled water in Rhode Island. Somehow the beverage industry will survive without us. I don't usually recommend particular courses of action (volcano mulch around trees is another thing that gets me), but not buying water in bottles just seems so obvious. Excuse my gushing!
For further reading and listening:
- Plastic Bottles Pile Up as Mountains of Waste ~ MSNBC, March 3, 2005
- Why Not Drink Local? Jim Hightower on Upscale Restaurants and Tap Water ~ Drink Local! ~ June 29, 2007
- Fighting the Tide: A Few Restaurants Tilt to Tap Water ~ New York Times, May 30, 2007 [link might not work unless you are in your New York Times account.]
- NRDC: Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?
- Wikipedia article on Bottled Water
Some Rhode Island Water Resources:
I'm with you! Although occasionally guilty of buying bottled water when on the road (especially for my kids), I'm trying really hard not buy it any more. We actually don't buy juice boxes either because of the excess packaging.
Love your pretty pitcher photos, so fancy!
Posted by: Michelle Riggen-Ransom | Saturday, June 07, 2008 at 10:35 PM