July 17, 2010

Water we going to do?

While checking out at the grocery store today, I was both amused and disturbed by a man shouting numbers as he tossed one plastic water bottle after the other into the recycling bin. 56 plastic water bottles. He announced it to the entire store and informed James the number was 56 (I think James was the manager or person who deals with recycling-- clearly loud-water-bottle-guy does this on the regular). I had two immediate reactions. Well, initially I was just laughing because loud-water-bottle-guy was intensely dripping sweat and causing a commotion in Foodtown, but after I registered what he was doing, I was excited to see someone recycling. My second reaction was, damn that's a lot of plastic!

I've been reading and researching and thinking a lot lately about consuming. How can we not take a step back and reflect on our habits after watching oil spew into the ocean for the past 3 months. The plastic water bottle industry is one of many that persuades and scares consumers into thinking we need their product. Annie Leonard explains in her video, The Story of Bottled Water, how buying and drinking from plastic water bottles is a vicious cycle that destroys what we need most...clean, natural water.

For the past year, I have become inseparable from my klean kanteen watter bottle. I used to go through 5 or 6 Poland Spring water bottles a day, but now I just refill my canteen! I sadly left my supercool red one on a bus in New Zealand (maybe a nice Kiwi found it and is spreading the Klean Kanteen love in Queenstown), but thankfully replaced it with simple aluminum a few weeks ago. I never leave home with out it.

Invest in a reusable canteen! Say no to plastic. Stay hydrated. Protect the earth's most valuable resource.

No comments:

Post a Comment