Chemicals: Chemicals are known to leach out of plastic bottles into drinks. BPA is a household word now, although the plastic companies still claim it’s perfectly fine (with a bunch of asterisks following with fine print), there are countries that have banned it, and Wal-Mart & Toys/Babies R Us have both opted not to carry and BPA containing plastics in their stores. (Companies LISTENING to consumer concerns = YAY CAPITALISM!)
Okay, the chemical issue is up for debate, I understand. But why risk poisoning myself if I have other options?
Pollution: Yeah, I don’t want to live in a world of trash. We all seem to think that “throw it away” is a clean, responsible thing to do and keeps our cities from piling up in tons of smelly pollution. It’s just out of sight, out of mind
What about recycling? Recycling still involves a lot of processing and energy when I could simply opt not to use the item in the first place. And a lot of plastics can’t be recycled, or the facilities are limited, or people just don’t. And it seems it won’t help our water bottles: According to “Tapped” only 10% of PETE (#1 Recyclable on the bottom of the container) can be used from recycled materials – and that must be PRE-consumer. Again, once it’s been used, even they don’t want it back!
In my research I’ve seen photos of people boating through plastic bottles, bird carcasses full of bottle caps, and word of “gyres” in the ocean the size of the U.S. where the trash of the world seems to collect in a floating plastic whirlpool. Straws and bottle caps litter shores. My precious sea turtles (I REALLY love sea turtles and was moved to be able to snorkel near them last year – they’re beautiful creatures!) with all kinds of plastic induced maladies from being wrapped in plastic or ingesting it. I’m landlocked, so it’s hard to imagine my plastic getting into the ocean, but I’m not terribly impressed by the landfills that rival the Rocky Mountains in size, either.
This stuff is not going away: Plastic is designed to last forever. At least a very long time. Why does my water bottle that I’ll get a few hours’ use from need to last forever? Oh – so in case it gets dropped. So it can be super-pressure filled in a factory. So nobody has to worry about dropping a case and losing their inventory. And then I can re-use it, too! Oh, then we’re back to the chemical debate where the re-use of plastics made for single use is considered dangerous. For my convenience, I leave a piece of plastic that will be here to greet my great, great, great, great grand children! How nice for them.
Okay, what now? As a tree-hugging capitalist, I want to save the environment and I want to go directly to the companies to vote with my dollar where I see things going as I like, and give feedback where things are going wrong. We get a vote every single day, with every single dollar we spend. And it’s so easy now to find the businesses online and send them feedback. I think this is as important as voting politically to make changes to our capitalist nation. I also believe in Gandhi’s quote,
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
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