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Questions linked to 'The Majestic Plastic Bag' Mockumentary

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Questions linked to 'The Majestic Plastic Bag' Mockumentary

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These questions were provided to my Year 8 English class to encourage further thinking.

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Clean Up Australia's understanding of Bottled Water

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Avoiding bottled water helps the environment and your hip pocket. Read our fact sheet to find out why.

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Bottled Water - Problems with Bottled Water

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Bottled Water - Problems with Bottled Water

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Article by Foodandwaterwatch.org about the problems with bottled water - accompanied with statistics and facts

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Why Tap Water Is Better Than Bottled Water

Bottled water is not typically safer than tap water. In fact, more than half of all bottled water comes from the tap.

Buying bottled water is like pouring money down the drain. Bottled water costs from $0.89 per gallon to $8.26 per gallon, compared to fractions of a penny for water from your tap. That makes bottled water thousands of times more expensive than tap water.

Water bottle garbage is a major source of pollution.

Buying a reusable bottle is an easy way to save money and help the environment.

Is My Tap Water Safe?
FACT: Bottled water is not "safer" than tap water.
Did you know that tap water is tested more frequently than bottled water? In fact, in the United States, our drinking water is continuously monitored and treated according to federal standards. If local tap water is unsafe then water companies are obligated, under federal law, to notify the public.

But My Tap Water Tastes Bad, What Should I Do?

How To Check Your Tap Water Quality

Contact your local water company to request a copy of the Annual Water Quality Report, also known as the Consumer Confidence Report. These reports are intended to help people make informed choices about their drinking water.

These reports contain a lot of useful information but are often overwhelming or confusing to read. We've put together a helpful guide on how to read your report and choose the best filtration system for your home.

Bottled Water Is Nearly 2,000 The Price of Tap Water

1. A gallon's worth of single-serve bottled water costs almost $9.50 - nearly 2,000 times the price of tap water, three times the national average price for a gallon of milk and four times the national average price for a gallon of regular grade gasoline.

2. From 2011 to 2016, the bottled water market grew 39 percent by volume, from 9.2 to 12.8 billion gallons, while the soft drink market shrank 8 percent in volume.

3. In 2016, 4 billion pounds of plastic was used in U.S. bottled water production, requiring an estimated energy input equivalent of about 64 million barrels of oil.

4. The International Bottled Water Association, Nestlé Waters NA, Nestlé USA and Coca-Cola lobbied Congress on issues including bottled water, water infrastructure, California drought relief and a National Park Service policy to allow parks to ban bottled water sales. These companies' lobbying expenditures between 2014 and 2016 topped $28 million.

5. Multinational bottling companies benefit from public disinvestment in water infrastructure, as the chairman of Nestlé Waters stated in 2009: "We believe tap infrastructure in the U.S. will continue to decline.... People will turn to filtration and bottled water for pure water needs."

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Bottled water is not typically safer than tap water. In fact, more than half of all bottled water comes from the tap. Buying bottled water is like pouring money down the drain. Bottled water costs from $0.89 per gallon to $8.26 per gallon, compared to fractions of a penny for water from your tap.

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Bottled Water - Article AGAINST Bottled Water

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Bottled Water - Article AGAINST Bottled Water

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Plastic Water Bottles Causing Flood of Harm to Our Environment"

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I remember the first time I saw a bottle of water for sale, thinking it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever encountered. Who the heck would actually PAY to drink water when they could get it for free at home? That's just crazy! I drank out of the faucet every single day, or the garden hose in a pinch, and there was obviously nothing wrong with me (other than mentally). But there they were, plastic bottles of water lined up in a cooler next to the Fantas and Tabs, happily purchased by the same screwy people who were walking around yelling into those new huge Walkie Talkie things called "cellphones." It was sometime in the 1980s, in the midst of a generation that was itself defined by ridiculousness -- fads like the Rubik's Cube, specialty Nike running shoes for a whopping $50, and Atari's Miss Pacman, an introduction to the new religion of consumerism for its own sake.

Back then, even the most optimistic capitalist couldn't have guessed where the water bottle industry was heading. Thirty years later it's not just a luxury item for those driving Porsche 911s with their salmon-colored collars up, but a stalwart of regular American life. Yes, me too -- I became one of those screwy people who bought bottled water by the case and yapped into his "cellphone" non -top (sometimes even when another person was on the line.)

But the damage from the bottled water industry isn't just to our intelligence and our wallets; it's also to the world we live in. Our environment is being impacted, not just the image of a nice sunny far-off meadow that word conjures but the actual surroundings that we depend on to sustain our lives. Our human fish tank is getting terrifically cloudy because of the plastic water bottles we buy and discard so thoughtlessly.
How big is the bottled water industry?
There are 50 billion water bottles consumed every year, about 30 billion of them in the US (which means we consume roughly 60 percent of the world's water bottles, even though we're about 4.5 percent of the world population).

There are 1,500 water bottles consumed per SECOND in the U.S.

2011 was a high point for bottle water sales, where 9.1 billion gallons were sold, or 29.1 gallons per person per year, the highest in sales and volume in history.
What does it take to manufacture the water bottles?
It takes three times the volume of water to manufacture one bottle of water than it does to fill it, and because of the chemical production of plastics that water is mostly unusable.

We use 17 million barrels of oil each year just to produce all of those water bottles.

To put it in perspective, that's enough oil to keep a million cars fueled for a whole year! (Or your Hummer to Ikea and back.)

The Earth Policy Institute factors the energy used to pump, process, transport and refrigerate our bottled water as over 50 million barrels of oil every year. That's an insane amount of resources for something that is a completely unneeded.

Another way to think of it: when you pick up a water bottle at the supermarket, hold it up and imagine it filled ¼ with oil. That's how much in fossil fuels it took just to manufacture it!

Even the environmental impact of delivering all that bottled water is profound, both from overseas (Fiji Water, Pellegrino) and distribution to stores in the US. It takes a fleet of 40,000 18-wheelers just to deliver our bottle water every week!
What's the environmental impact?
Water bottles are made of completely recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics, but PETs don't biodegrade they photodegrade, which means they break down into smaller fragments over time. Those fragments absorb toxins that pollute our waterways, contaminate our soil, and sicken animals (which we then eat). Plastic trash also absorbs organic pollutants like BPA and PCBs. They may take centuries to decompose while sitting in landfills, amounting to endless billions of little environmentally poisonous time bombs.

According to the Ocean Conservatory, plastic bottles and plastic bags are the most prevalent form of pollution found on our beaches and in our oceans -- every square mile of the ocean has over 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in it.
But don't we recycle?
Ten percent of the plastic manufactured worldwide ends up in the ocean, the majority of that settling on the ocean floor where it will never degrade.

Eighty percent of the water bottles we buy end up in landfills, the absolute worst place for them to be. That means roughly for every 10 bottles we drink, only two end up in the recycle bin.

Our national recycle rate for PET's is only 23 percent, which means we throw 38 billion water bottles into landfills a year.
Isn't bottled water safer and cleaner?
That's $1 billion worth of plastic that should end up in the "recycling stream" where they can be reused as carpeting, synthetic decking, playground equipment, and new bottles and containers.

No. In fact, all the majority of evidence shows that it's worse for you. Plastic leaches into the water it holds, which has been linked to health issues like reproductive problems and different types of cancer. Harmful hormone-disrupting phthalates leach into the bottled water we drink after as little as 10 weeks of storage, or much faster once the bottles have been left in the sun (like in the car.)

Tap water isn't perfect either because the purity varies depending on where you live, but the same could be said for bottled water. The National Resources Defense Council conducted an intensive study of bottled water and ascertained that 22 percent of the water tested contained contaminant levels that exceeded the state health limits.

New York city has the safest, cleanest tap water in the whole country, and San Francisco draws its public drinking water supply from nearby Yosemite National Park, so pure they don't even require it to be filtered.
Does it taste better?
If you wanted to check out how your local water system rates, click here.

In blind taste tests people have trouble differentiating between tap water and bottled water, and it's virtually indistinguishable once poured through a simple filter.
Is bottled water a rip off?
Your best bet is using tap water run through a good filter on your kitchen tap or drinking container, which will yield you the cheapest, cleanest, most convenient water source.

You know how you pay $3 + for a cup of coffee that probably costs 20 cents to make? You look like a financial genius making that purchase compared to the economics of bottled water. Bottled water costs well in excess of 1,000 times that of tap water, even with a filter.

Eight glasses of water, the recommended daily amount costs about $0.50 cents out of the tap, but about $1,400 if you bought bottles!

To put it in scale, if all of the water you used around the house for showers, dishwashing, watering the plants, etc. was bottled water your monthly H20 bill would be about $9,000.

Did you know that up to 47.8 percent of the bottled water we buy is actually just repackaged tap water? Yeah, and the mega-beverage conglomerates Coke, Pepsi and Nestle hold most of the market share. Can you spell "S-U-C-K-E-R?"

We complain incessantly about gas prices at $3.89 a gallon, but the same amount of San Pellegrino bottled water would cost close to $10. But I'm not trying to stop you from flushing your money down the toilet (so to speak,) however there is a greater cost to all of us as a society, country, and interconnected world community.

What is the ripple effect?

780 million people around the world, more than twice the population of the United States, don't have access to clean, safe drinking water.

Of course the water bottle you don't buy isn't going to end up with them, but everything is interconnected, from trade policies and use of fossil fuels, to environmental impact and irrigation, and ultimately damage to food-producing industries like agriculture and fisheries.

Already, pollution is estimated to be one of the biggest causes of death around the world, affecting more than 100 million people per year, more than epidemics like Malaria and HIV.

The U.S. consumes natural resources, like fossil fuels, and pollutes the environment at an alarming rate. Though less than five percent of the world's population, we consume more than 25 percent of the resources and produce 30 percent of the trash and environmental pollutants.

Not only are we severely harming the land, air and water around us, but the rest of the world has to pay the price for our thoughtless over-consumption, and soon our children and generations to come will be tirelessly cleaning up our mess.
So please stay tuned for part 2, What We Can do TODAY to Fix The Water Bottle Problem, and
part 3, Creative And Functional Uses For Empty Water Bottles.
However, it's not all doom and gloom -- just like the water bottle phenomenon took off within a short time, as did cell phones and other trends, a cultural shift can start creating solutions with lightning efficiency.

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Plastic Water Bottles Causing Flood of Harm to Our Environment.

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I remember the first time I saw a bottle of water for sale, thinking it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever encountered. Who the heck would actually PAY to drink water when they could get it for free at home? That's just crazy!

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How is this persuasive and how can we improve this situation?

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INTHEBLACK covers the issues and people shaping business around the world. In-depth stories, analysis, photos, videos, podcasts, polls and more.

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Bottled Water - Thank You Water Advertisement

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Bottled Water - Thank You Water Advertisement

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Thank You Water advertisement: How can we IMPROVE the benefits of Thank You Water?

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Letters to the editor arguing for different sides on Sustainable Energy

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A persuasive piece by the Clean Energy Council advocating for clean and sustainable energy

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UNESCO Information on Sustainability in Curriculum

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UNESCO Information on Sustainability in Curriculum

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Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future is a UNESCO programme for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. It provides professional development for student teachers, teachers, curriculum developers, education policy makers, and authors of educational materials. The modules are divided into 4 themes. More ...

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Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future

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Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future is a UNESCO programme for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. It provides professional development for student teachers, teachers, curriculum developers, education policy makers, and authors of educational materials. The modules are divided into 4 themes. More ...

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SUSTAINABLE ENERGY - Clear explanation of the concept and examples

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SUSTAINABLE ENERGY - Clear explanation of the concept and examples

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Access to safe, clean and sustainable energy supplies is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity during the twenty-first century. This free course, Why sustainable energy matters, will...

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PLASTIC BAGS -  'The Majestic Plastic Bag' Mockumentary

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PLASTIC BAGS -  'The Majestic Plastic Bag' Mockumentary

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A great mockumentary narrated by the brilliant David Attenborough using irony and satire to convey the issue of plastic bag usage.

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The Majestic Plastic Bag - A Mockumentary

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Sophisticated explanation of what the concept of Food Miles is.

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It's easy to romanticize the 1621 coming-together of the Wampanoag tribe with the struggling European settlers, which many people now view as the original Thanksgiving.

From an environmental perspective, the nostalgic urge is stronger still. The carbon footprint of the first Thanksgiving meal was approximately zero. Seventeenth-century farmers grew food, ate food and used those calories to grow more food. The energy loop was closed, and the climate was unaffected.

Fossil fuels changed that equation. The modern idea of " food miles," or the distance your food travels from farm to table, would have left the Wampanoag bemused. When they needed corn, they walked from their wetu - communal huts made of saplings and cattail mats - to their assigned cornfields. They hunted for meat on communal lands adjacent to their villages.

By contrast, despite some local corn production in the summer and early fall, much of the corn coming to the Washington area now originates in states as far away as Illinois and Iowa. Most of the turkeys sold in the region come from North Carolina, Arkansas and Minnesota.

As you prepare to gather your family together for Thanksgiving, it's worth taking a moment to consider the impact your meal will have on the Earth and the climate. Using data compiled by the Environmental Working Group, it's possible to estimate the carbon footprint of each element of your meal. It takes fossil fuels to plant, fertilize and transport the food, but not everything on the menu contributes equally. (All of these numbers are national averages.)

Let's start with the turkey. Compared with other meats, turkey is fairly easy on the planet. Overall, producing and delivering a pound of beef to your home emits 2 ¹ / 2 times as much greenhouse gas as bringing a turkey to the table. Poultry, in general, requires far less feed per pound of meat produced than beef does. Also, a bird emits a significantly smaller amount of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide in its waste than a cow or a sheep does. (Chicken, on the other hand, produces 63 percent as much greenhouse gas as turkey; this is probably because chickens have been bred to grow really fast on very little food.)

In total, a 3 ¹ / ₂-ounce serving of turkey is responsible for approximately 2.4 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents, which is about the same as you produce by driving a car three miles. Of course, you're not really going to limit yourself to one serving of turkey, so the actual footprint is likely to be larger. I'll put you down for two servings, or the equivalent of six miles of driving.

Look down the table at those mashed potatoes. Plant-based foods are generally better for the environment than meats. Potatoes, however, are among the more carbon-intensive plant foods on a pound-for-pound basis. Although it takes very little energy to grow tubers, transporting and cooking them emits large amounts of carbon. One cup of mashed potatoes will release approximately 1.5 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents. (Mashed potatoes typically include some milk and butter, which are responsible for slightly less greenhouse gas than potatoes per pound, but they constitute such a small proportion of the dish that we can ignore them.) Again assuming that you go for seconds, that means the equivalent of driving 3.7 miles.

What about your vegetables? Whether it's green beans, broccoli or something more exotic, the green veggies are likely to be the most Earth-friendly part of your Thanksgiving meal. A one-cup serving of broccoli is responsible for only 0.4 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents. Even if you go for seconds of your green vegetables, you'd be on the hook for only about one mile of driving.

If you have a taste for wine - or a particularly difficult family - alcohol may be another significant contributor to the carbon footprint of your Thanksgiving meal. According to numbers generated by the beverage industry, drinking half a bottle of North American wine accounts for nearly two pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents, which is equal to 2.4 miles of driving. (This is for illustrative purposes only. I do not condone drinking and driving.)

When you add up the turkey, potatoes, vegetables and wine, your Thanksgiving meal might be responsible for emitting more than 10 pounds of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. If you're traveling fewer than 10 miles, there's a good chance you'll emit more carbon dioxide eating than driving to and from your meal.

I'm not one to idealize the past. Our exploitation of fossil fuels has brought us the joys of the Internet and global travel, among many other things, and it has played a part in the spectacular lengthening of the human life span. Especially at this time of year, we ought to be thankful for those things. I have no desire to turn back the clock to 17th-century life, which strikes me as having been cold, boring and rather sickly. But we also ought to give thanksfor the resources that remain available to us, and that means using them thoughtfully, both in our cars and in our kitchens.

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The environmental costs of a Thanksgiving meal; 'food miles' and other damage

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It's easy to romanticize the 1621 coming-together of the Wampanoag tribe with the struggling European settlers, which many people now view as the original Thanksgiving. From an environmental perspective, the nostalgic urge is stronger still. The carbon footprint of the first Thanksgiving meal was approximately zero.

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Social statistics reflecting the population of 100 people on Earth.

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The Miniature Earth . 2010 edition . Official version

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A great vide exploring the problems with the unsustainable economic framework of society.