Carry a plastic water bottle at your own peril; the pressure of social belief is forming away from you. From top rating documentaries, to the written word and politics, the hot debate on the soapbox is the horror around bottled water and the waste the industry demonstrates.

The processing, moving and removal of water in petrochemical plastic bottles requires big amounts of water and energy, and produces large quantities of greenhouse gases and waste.

Director of the recent documentary ‘Tapped: get off the bottle’ Stephanie Soechtig sums it up “1500 water bottles end up in landfill every second – that’s 30 million water bottles a day! We wanted to show people just how much waste is generated by bottled water.” The crew of Tapped are publicizing the movie with an across-America roadshow, collecting money from donors to take down their water bottle waste and taking their old plastic water bottle in exchange for a reusable stainless steel bottle. Download Tapped from Amazon or iTunes.

Another short film ‘The Story of Bottled Water’ was released on World Water Day in March. From Annie Leonard of the critically acclaimed ‘The Story of Stuff’, this short film shows the method that amounts to convincing Americans into purchasing over five hundred million bottles of water each week, as opposed to a few cents cost for a drink from the tap. Check out the animation on You Tube.

Through her book ‘Bottlemania’, writer Elizabeth Royte investigates one of the most massive marketing cons of the last century and provides a strong environmental alarm bell. She asks the questions we must come to answer to. Who owns our water supply? What happens when a bottled-water business possesses your town’s water source? Is the water that comes from your tap absolutely safe? What is really the environmental factor of production, transportation and disposing of one plastic water bottle?

Politicians from all around the nation are realising that they must take responsibility for action – notably when the places in which they serve are high consumers of bottled water. How often do we witness a politician at a government function drinking from a water bottle. Why can’t they might be able to use a water glass in Parliament House.

Leslie Samuelrich of Corporate Accountability International, stated “Cities and states are spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on bottled water, and that’s not to mention what’s spent to deal with all the plastic bottles that are thrown out.”

In July 2009, the NSW rural town of Bundanoon became the first community of Australia to prevent the sale of bottled water. About 60 towns in the American states and some in Canada and the United Kingdom have lately prohibited spending taxpayer money on bottled water.

It is certain that this problem will be debated come World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the environment’s most current water-related events.

Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores.

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