They should ban all plastic bottles, go back to glass.
Or put a deposit of the cost of the beverage on every bottle. if the beverage cost 1 USD, you pay $2 and you get the $1 back when you return the bottle. Price increases, deposit increases.
huh? this is common practice all over the world... you pay a bit extra when you return the bottles, cans etc to recycling facility you get back the extra you payed... where do you live that this is not happening?
Where do you live that the deposit is 100% of the cost of the beverage? In the US some states will pay for bottles but it's generally a tiny amount, not worth the inconvenience for most people.
I am not sure what's the term CRV or CV but where I live in CA it is definitely not 1 buck per bottle. Probably 5 cents. The coke/water bottle costs a lot more so adding 5 cents is a small tax and does not do much to change the behavior.
oh yea its not a large tax but it is happening for a long time, for sure we should just have dispensers and you bring your own bottle, just like we have now for shopping bags they are all gone you have to bring your own bag. This way you buy a nice metal or what ever bottle and reuse it for years.
In the suburbs ? In some neighborhood people going trough trash will get hassled by the police. In the city (a poor city) were I live, people going through the trash are generaly chased away. Plus to go through everyone's trash you would need lots of people in the neighborhood, can you image the impact if that happens ?
Plus, ever try and return a bottle as a "trash collector" ? Stores will throw you out claiming the bottle was not purchased in the store. So I would say 90% of bottles thrown out end up in a land-fill or in the sea.
This is in the suburbs of Los Angeles. No one chases the guy who comes around to collect bottles from our recycling, because he is careful and doesn’t knock over the bins. Some of us leave the bottles and cans on the side of our trash cans to make it easier for him. He is always friendly when I say hi to him.
I am not sure what you mean by the store turning you away… there is a location where you turn the bottles and cans in to get paid, it is not connected to a store. It is run by the government.
I don't know which geopolitical crisis might put us on a different track. A massive shortage of corn sugar ? A popular hoax making parents believe that plastic bottles will turn their kids gay ?
Plastic is far safer than glass at many venues though. Broken glass in or around water, or broken glass at a sports stadium with lots of kids is problematic for example.
Glass is a terrible idea because of litter. The beaches around here used to be unusable because of the amount of glass in the sand. Nothing like a kiddo screaming because of a chunk of glass in their foot to make you change your mind.
Not to mention transportation energy. Glass bottles are ~40-50x heavier than plastic and plastic lined aluminum cans. At ~180 Billion cans per year that fuel usage adds up. It's not an accident or malevolence that plastic is so widely used, it is efficiency.
Can you believe they really used to hand cups and plates made of a material that could take over a million years to decompose and called it a "disposable"?
"disposable" just means it's... disposable. In other words, that you can dispose of it. What makes you think "disposable" implies it will readily degrade in the environment?
The point is that we really shouldn't be telling people to throw these away. We have no solution for handling them, no way to recycle them.
Pretty much everything is "disposable" if you're being pedantic. I can throw away a couch or a mug as well, but there's a reason those aren't marketed as "disposable"
Is it plastics? Is it other synthetic compounds like PTFE, PFOA, PFAS?
I don't think the links are clear, but I'm not going to be surprised if it becomes clear these synthetic compounds are <all> negatively affecting human health.
Leaded gasoline was sold between 1922 and 1996, and it's been claimed
leaded gas has killed millions, and affected the IQ and mental well being of many.
And the sad part is, lead was well understood as toxic before leaded gas was sold in 1922.
It could just be that a factor which increases testosterone has been steadily disappearing.
For example, testosterone is elevated in males after winning a fight. So if physical confrontations among males are getting less frequent for some reason (which seems like a good thing to me), then that could lead to lower testosterone levels.
Another possible explanation is that we've had good birth control for a few generations now, which has eliminated the advantage of high sex drive on a males' chances of fathering children. So there is no longer a selection effect for high testosterone males. (Also seems like a good thing.)
Anyway, my point is not that the above explanations are correct; just that there might be benign explanations.
yes dumbest idea ever... how lazy have we gotten to not be able to fill a bottle of water at home or where ever they have dispensers and be fine with that instead of buying bottled water that is shipped from some dumb place that is depleting local water source all for convenience .
It's more forgetfulness/plans change... I think probably installing water fountains everywhere would help more than giving everyone a metal water bottle.
In my life I went from never seeing these to seeing everyone carrying them. There really was a focus on selling the concept of the purity of bottled water.
Sadly in some places it probably is safer/tastes better. But for most of us our municipal water supply is far superior. Mine's from a mountain fed aquaphor, no way I'm drinking plastic infused bottled crap shipped 2000km that's taken from yet another municipal water supply anyway!
As someone who used to keep a carton of bottled water in my car's trunk in case of breakdown, emergency, etc., what are some good alternatives for portable long-term storage of drinkable water? Suppose I could fill a bunch of steel or glass bottles and secure them in the trunk, but that gets expensive.
For that use case bottled water is pretty much optimal. You can get food-grade steel jerrycans or plastic containers, but that's going to need more maintenance (regular cleaning/water replacement).
"We submit that the safe operating space of the NE-PB is exceeded when annual production and releases increase at a pace that outstrips the global capacity for assessment and monitoring. Based on the evidence presented here, we submit that we are now in a zone of exceedance of the Planetary Boundary fornovel entities. Further, even if we were to stabilize or reduce production and releases, the effects due to our transgression of the NE-PB will still be a threat due to the persistence of many novel entities. Thus, we conclude that increases in production and releases of novel entities are not consistent with keeping humanity within the safe operating space, in the light of the global capacity for management. We invite the research community to continue work, using the impact pathway and understanding of the NE-PB presented here, to develop more operational control variables, more robust quantification of the NE-PB, and better-defined
limits for NE emissions. However, these continued research
efforts need to go in parallel with urgent action to manage
today’s NE-PB threats."
The whole bottled beverage industry is incredibly wasteful. Why do we need to transport gallons of tap water or sugar water just so it can be sold to individuals for a gigantic markup?
I’d love to see a warning label on products “Contains microplastics that may increase risk of health problems” similar to cigarette warnings.
>Why do we need to transport gallons of tap water or sugar water just so it can be sold to individuals for a gigantic markup?
tap water: because you're out and about and didn't have the foresight or didn't want to bring a bottle with you, so you buy a bottle on site and drink from that. I doubt many people are buying bottled water to drink at home.
sugar water: because people like the taste of sugar water, and plastic bottles is the best way to deliver said carbonated sugar water to the consumer.
>I’d love to see a warning label on products “Contains microplastics that may increase risk of health problems” similar to cigarette warnings.
The fact that bottled water contains a wide array of microplastics, some of which aren't used in single use beverage bottles, makes me think the microplastics are coming from the water supply, rather than from the plastic bottle itself. If that's the case, you'd need to add a warning for tap water as well, as well as every sort of food that is made using tap water (probably every food ever). That'd just lead to a prop 65 situation[1] where everything has that warning and it gets tuned out.
That statement is based on my experience living in a major city. I don't think anyone in my office drinks bottled flat water. That said I did some research and it does seem to be the case that a significant portion of Americans drink "only" or "mostly" bottled water.
I have a family member who exclusively drinks water from plastic bottles, at home. Does not trust the tap water nor even when it's filtered through the refrigerator. Yes they know the water in the bottle is also tap water, doesn't stop them.
>Then replace the single-use bottles with reusable ones like stores have done with bags.
What realistically happens is that we end up with thicker "reusable" bottles that end only being used once. This is basically what happened in cities that banned single use plastic takeout containers. Restaurants replaced them with "reusable" containers (think the plastic ones used for mealprep), that end up being chucked after a single use. The whole situation is worse than before because the "reusable" containers use more plastic and therefore have a larger ecological footprint than the thinner/disposable ones.
>Soda fountains
Most restaurants do have them, for cost reasons. However, they're not really feasible for small scale operations (eg. food trucks) and/or remote areas.
>cans
They're not recloseable, which presents a big problem for large portion sizes. Also they don't seem to be available in sizes larger than 12oz for carbonated drinks (maybe they don't scale well?).
> at-home carbonation are all just as good if not better.
They're only really economical if you're a frequent drinker. Otherwise it will take forever for you to recoup the cost of the unit. There are other issues with it as well. The syrup for those aren't "name brand", which puts off some people. Also, IME you lose quite a bit of fizz when mixing the syrup with the carbonated water (they tell you to carbonate the water first, then add the syrup).
>What? Water does not naturally contain microplastics. The microplastics come from plastic, not from water.
Water might not "naturally contain microplastics" in the sense that they didn't contain microplastics a few hundred years ago, but nowadays microplastics are everywhere to the extent that you can assume almost everything contains microplastic. From the article:
"Microplastics in bottled water may affect the health of millions of people, and they show their presence worldwide. Before, experts detected their prevalence in the world’s oceans, where more than five trillion pieces of plastics swim about"
> Why do you have such an interest in questioning other commenter's motivations?
You’re arguing for a status quo that needs radical change in the face of looming ecological disaster. No one else commenting defending microplastics like you are here talking like this is all okay. What is there to gain by this?
>No one else commenting defending microplastics like you are here talking like this is all okay.
I'm really not. In the comment you replied to, I pointed out:
1. why people why might buy bottled water/sugar water
2. why microplastic warning labels on bottled water might be flawed
The first is a explanation of why people drink bottled water, and isn't a defense of anything. I suppose the latter is "arguing for a status quo" in the sense that it's a suggestion to move away from the status quo, and I oppose it, but you need to have a really polarized worldview to think that opposing a policy suggestion because it's bad means I think "this is all okay", or that I'm a shill for the opposite side (as your thinly veiled comments imply). For instance, if someone's suggesting that we solve the housing crisis in the US by giving everybody $1M, and I argue against that by pointing out that giving $1M in helicopter money might be a bad idea, it doesn't mean I think the housing situation "is all okay", nor does it mean I'm a shill for landlords.
It would be so much more efficient if homes, businesses, restaurants, hotels all had a good water filter in place. There is no real benefit in the trace minerals you get from fancy bottled water.
Just drink it straight. Municipal water (with few exceptions) is already filtered, treated, and regularly-tested for contaminants. It’s an insidious message from the bottled water industry that tap water is somehow poisonous without being filtered. It’s fine.
It’s practically a miracle that I can turn on a faucet anywhere in my state and feel safe drinking the water.
I’ve used tap water my entire life, in different cities / countries. It’s fine and safe, but I understand the appeal of bottled mineral water because tap water always has a distinct taste, that varies per location even within the same city.
The sourcing for the claim that plastic in bottled water is a serious problem seems pretty thin. That blog links to a Business Insider article which links to a dead link on some environmental lobby group website called Orb Media. Searching on their site all I could find was this very non specific post that is very light on details. I wouldn’t go advocating for the banning of bottled water based on this nonsense.
Discussion about microplastics aside, does anyone feel something's "off" about the article? The first few sections feels off but is passable, but the last section feels like SEO spam ie.
>What are Microplastics? And 6 tips on how reduce to them. Read More.
>Concerned About Microplastics in Drinking Water? The Right Filter Can Help. Read More.
>The Best Bottled Water To Buy for Maximum Hydration and Health. Read More.
>How to Choose the Right Bottled Water. Read More.
All but the last link seem to link to sites that are trying to commercial sites (ie. companies selling water filtration technologies or affiliate marketing sites) that are trying to get "organic" search traffic (ie. by posting content articles). Also for some reason the author thought it was fit to advertise chinese vegan cooking? What does that have to do with microplastics and bottled water?
>Traditional Chinese Vegan diet, Credit, The Works of Life
Yes, the claims are not sourced to reputable sources. If you click through to to the plastic in bottled water claim for example it leads to a non-scientific article from a 3 person non-profit that looks like a political lobbying organization masquerading as journalists.
Tap water also has microplastics in it due to PVC pipes (could be even more toxic than PET/PETE particles even). The only way you can get water that has not touched (much!) plastic is glass-bottled water (imported brands being cheaper than domestic ones!) or, let's say, the 2.5-gallon glass jugs from Mountain Valley Spring Water, which not available in most locations and is so expensive, and use a porcelain dispenser, which still has a plastic spigot, by the way! Reusable glass and steel bottles are still not envioronmentally friendly as they are not cleaned easily and without waste! Well, still, it has a lower footprint than recycling glass bottls after a single use, but at least you don't waste extra water to clean them and don't put all kinds of chemicals in the sewage water after cleaning! Last, but not least - surface water was recently proven to contain unsafe levels of forever chemicals, which, I'm not sure to what degree, should be less in spring water, but I'm not absolutely sure about that either.
Yes, there's and most caps even have some lining - resin or pastic, I'm not sure, but there's a really small surface and most cases during transporation water won't touch it. Well, I'm idealizing things as the water from the spring most probably goes thru PVC pipes into the bottles anyway...
Playing the devil's advocate here - bottled water provides safe drinking water in certain parts of the world, in places where citizens do not have access to clean tap water.
With that said, some of the businesses practices around the extraction and marketing of bottled water are abhorrent and cannot be excused.
I have filtered water at home. Before I go anywhere, I have metal water bottles and canteens that I'll put ice in and fill with water. No need for me to pay for expensive water that I already have at home, and no need for me to drink out of plastics.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadOr put a deposit of the cost of the beverage on every bottle. if the beverage cost 1 USD, you pay $2 and you get the $1 back when you return the bottle. Price increases, deposit increases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation#...
Plus, ever try and return a bottle as a "trash collector" ? Stores will throw you out claiming the bottle was not purchased in the store. So I would say 90% of bottles thrown out end up in a land-fill or in the sea.
I am not sure what you mean by the store turning you away… there is a location where you turn the bottles and cans in to get paid, it is not connected to a store. It is run by the government.
Plastic bottles killed the "consigne", and it seems like we have neither the infrastructure, nor the will, to bring it back.
https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2017/11/15/recy...
I don't know which geopolitical crisis might put us on a different track. A massive shortage of corn sugar ? A popular hoax making parents believe that plastic bottles will turn their kids gay ?
Higher deposit for plastic sounds good to me.
The real answer is in giving people clean drinking water at the tap IMO, so many people use bottled water exclusively.
/s
This could be akin to "can you believe they leeched people because they thought their blood was bad?"
100 Years from now...
"Can you believe people drank out of those things, basically eating credit cards worth (yea, like they would have those still) of plastic?"
(styrofoam)
I think future generations, if there are any, will look back on us as being extraordinarily bizarre in our greed and waste.
Pretty much everything is "disposable" if you're being pedantic. I can throw away a couch or a mug as well, but there's a reason those aren't marketed as "disposable"
Is it plastics? Is it other synthetic compounds like PTFE, PFOA, PFAS?
I don't think the links are clear, but I'm not going to be surprised if it becomes clear these synthetic compounds are <all> negatively affecting human health.
Leaded gasoline was sold between 1922 and 1996, and it's been claimed leaded gas has killed millions, and affected the IQ and mental well being of many.
And the sad part is, lead was well understood as toxic before leaded gas was sold in 1922.
For example, testosterone is elevated in males after winning a fight. So if physical confrontations among males are getting less frequent for some reason (which seems like a good thing to me), then that could lead to lower testosterone levels.
Another possible explanation is that we've had good birth control for a few generations now, which has eliminated the advantage of high sex drive on a males' chances of fathering children. So there is no longer a selection effect for high testosterone males. (Also seems like a good thing.)
Anyway, my point is not that the above explanations are correct; just that there might be benign explanations.
https://www.aabb.org/news-resources/news/article/2022/04/26/...
Sadly in some places it probably is safer/tastes better. But for most of us our municipal water supply is far superior. Mine's from a mountain fed aquaphor, no way I'm drinking plastic infused bottled crap shipped 2000km that's taken from yet another municipal water supply anyway!
Is that inflicted with micrometals??
E.g. FEMA recommends bottled water, or replacing water and bleaching every 6 months: https://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/f&web.pdf
I think using plastic only for emergencies is perfectly rational and appropriate. Or buy a reusable plastic jug and use that.
"We submit that the safe operating space of the NE-PB is exceeded when annual production and releases increase at a pace that outstrips the global capacity for assessment and monitoring. Based on the evidence presented here, we submit that we are now in a zone of exceedance of the Planetary Boundary fornovel entities. Further, even if we were to stabilize or reduce production and releases, the effects due to our transgression of the NE-PB will still be a threat due to the persistence of many novel entities. Thus, we conclude that increases in production and releases of novel entities are not consistent with keeping humanity within the safe operating space, in the light of the global capacity for management. We invite the research community to continue work, using the impact pathway and understanding of the NE-PB presented here, to develop more operational control variables, more robust quantification of the NE-PB, and better-defined limits for NE emissions. However, these continued research efforts need to go in parallel with urgent action to manage today’s NE-PB threats."
I’d love to see a warning label on products “Contains microplastics that may increase risk of health problems” similar to cigarette warnings.
tap water: because you're out and about and didn't have the foresight or didn't want to bring a bottle with you, so you buy a bottle on site and drink from that. I doubt many people are buying bottled water to drink at home.
sugar water: because people like the taste of sugar water, and plastic bottles is the best way to deliver said carbonated sugar water to the consumer.
>I’d love to see a warning label on products “Contains microplastics that may increase risk of health problems” similar to cigarette warnings.
The fact that bottled water contains a wide array of microplastics, some of which aren't used in single use beverage bottles, makes me think the microplastics are coming from the water supply, rather than from the plastic bottle itself. If that's the case, you'd need to add a warning for tap water as well, as well as every sort of food that is made using tap water (probably every food ever). That'd just lead to a prop 65 situation[1] where everything has that warning and it gets tuned out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65
Boy, do I have some bad news for you.
No offence meant but you're really out of touch here.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/973987/us-consumer-behav...
Then replace the single-use bottles with reusable ones like stores have done with bags.
>plastic bottles is the best way to deliver
Soda fountains, cans, at-home carbonation are all just as good if not better.
>microplastics are coming from the water supply
What? Water does not naturally contain microplastics. The microplastics come from plastic, not from water.
Why do you have such an interest in defending the bottle beverage industry?
What realistically happens is that we end up with thicker "reusable" bottles that end only being used once. This is basically what happened in cities that banned single use plastic takeout containers. Restaurants replaced them with "reusable" containers (think the plastic ones used for mealprep), that end up being chucked after a single use. The whole situation is worse than before because the "reusable" containers use more plastic and therefore have a larger ecological footprint than the thinner/disposable ones.
>Soda fountains
Most restaurants do have them, for cost reasons. However, they're not really feasible for small scale operations (eg. food trucks) and/or remote areas.
>cans
They're not recloseable, which presents a big problem for large portion sizes. Also they don't seem to be available in sizes larger than 12oz for carbonated drinks (maybe they don't scale well?).
> at-home carbonation are all just as good if not better.
They're only really economical if you're a frequent drinker. Otherwise it will take forever for you to recoup the cost of the unit. There are other issues with it as well. The syrup for those aren't "name brand", which puts off some people. Also, IME you lose quite a bit of fizz when mixing the syrup with the carbonated water (they tell you to carbonate the water first, then add the syrup).
>What? Water does not naturally contain microplastics. The microplastics come from plastic, not from water.
Water might not "naturally contain microplastics" in the sense that they didn't contain microplastics a few hundred years ago, but nowadays microplastics are everywhere to the extent that you can assume almost everything contains microplastic. From the article:
"Microplastics in bottled water may affect the health of millions of people, and they show their presence worldwide. Before, experts detected their prevalence in the world’s oceans, where more than five trillion pieces of plastics swim about"
see also: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/micro...
>Why do you have such an interest in defending the bottle beverage industry?
Why do you have such an interest in questioning other commenter's motivations?
You’re arguing for a status quo that needs radical change in the face of looming ecological disaster. No one else commenting defending microplastics like you are here talking like this is all okay. What is there to gain by this?
>No one else commenting defending microplastics like you are here talking like this is all okay.
I'm really not. In the comment you replied to, I pointed out:
1. why people why might buy bottled water/sugar water
2. why microplastic warning labels on bottled water might be flawed
The first is a explanation of why people drink bottled water, and isn't a defense of anything. I suppose the latter is "arguing for a status quo" in the sense that it's a suggestion to move away from the status quo, and I oppose it, but you need to have a really polarized worldview to think that opposing a policy suggestion because it's bad means I think "this is all okay", or that I'm a shill for the opposite side (as your thinly veiled comments imply). For instance, if someone's suggesting that we solve the housing crisis in the US by giving everybody $1M, and I argue against that by pointing out that giving $1M in helicopter money might be a bad idea, it doesn't mean I think the housing situation "is all okay", nor does it mean I'm a shill for landlords.
Even the best tap water likely flows through miles of plastic pipe before it reaches your home.
I think we just should look at bottled water as a strange thing to ship around. A little stigma here would go a long way.
It’s practically a miracle that I can turn on a faucet anywhere in my state and feel safe drinking the water.
https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=FL4130901
https://orbmedia.org/plus-plastic
>What are Microplastics? And 6 tips on how reduce to them. Read More.
>Concerned About Microplastics in Drinking Water? The Right Filter Can Help. Read More.
>The Best Bottled Water To Buy for Maximum Hydration and Health. Read More.
>How to Choose the Right Bottled Water. Read More.
All but the last link seem to link to sites that are trying to commercial sites (ie. companies selling water filtration technologies or affiliate marketing sites) that are trying to get "organic" search traffic (ie. by posting content articles). Also for some reason the author thought it was fit to advertise chinese vegan cooking? What does that have to do with microplastics and bottled water?
>Traditional Chinese Vegan diet, Credit, The Works of Life
Plus, microplastics are a global phenomenon. Like, they're found on the bottom of the ocean.
With that said, some of the businesses practices around the extraction and marketing of bottled water are abhorrent and cannot be excused.