Bill Gill On: Water Bottles

Bill Gill:

I love the "non-disposable" water bottles as a fashion statement.

Look at me, I am enlightened, I do not buy disposable plastic water bottles because they just end up in landfills. Of course, anyone with half a brain understands that you dispose of your used plastic water bottles in the recycle bin and then they are recycled into new plastic water bottles. But I prefer to use the term landfill because it sounds much more sinister.

Instead of disposable plastic water bottles I buy an engineered water bottle made in China from various metals and plastics plus fashionable colors and/or graphics. You can have virtually anthing you want...red, blue, metallic purple or green, forest animals, any number of earth-friendly "Life is Good" inane statements, flames, skulls, bullets, knock-off Ed Hardy graphics, etc. The possibilities are endless.

One problem, though, is that I quickly get bored with my water bottle because people aren't impressed with it after a while. That is why I actually have a dozen and counting non-disposable water bottles. The other day I realized that I don't need all of these old non-disposable water bottles so, with a fleeting pang of guilt and remorse, I threw most of them away.

Hey shit for brains, maybe you should do just a LITTLE research before spouting off.

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=plastic+water+bottle+landfill

Just about every mainstream media published story on this issue comes to the conclusion that 50-90% of plastic water bottles end up in the LANDFILL, not being recycled. This is such a well understood fact that it really is quite surprising that you weren't aware of it.

That last part was a joke. It's not really all that surprising that you didn't know about it.

The reason this happens is pretty easy to understand. The majority of people use water bottles while they are away from home, and it is difficult to find recycling boxes. Therefore, most toss them away wherever is convenient... ie: a garbage can, the side of the road, or into the North Pacific Gyre.

And even if one were to recycle your plastic water bottles, Bill seems to completely ignore the energy used in the entire product life-cycle. From the molding of the bottles themselves, down to the fuel used to truck those water bottles around from the filtered city water source to the health food store.

I can't speak for everyone, but I still have my very first BPA-laden Nalgene water bottle that I bought almost 20 years ago still in regular service. I only use bottled water when there is no other option.