August 2. 2008
Opinion
Are plastic bottles producing our new litter problem?
, last modified It was one of those balmy days at the beach of which summer memories are made.
The temperature and humidity was just right and the sky blended seamlessly with the Lake Erie horizon. A breeze painted the waves with little whitecaps.
It was a perfect time for a walk along the beach.
I only had walked a few hundred feet when I realized we have a problem.
Along the way, just beyond the line where Erie deposits its flotsam and jetsam, I found trash.
But it was trash with a common theme. Most of the wash-ups were empty plastic water bottles.
Some were pretty big, but some were the typical size used by Aquafina or Dasani or any of the other brands.
My first thought was the kind of knee-jerk reaction I have when a driver in front of me tosses a fast food bag out the window or empties his ashtray in the road at a stoplight.
I want to scream "Slob!" out loud or maybe run out and grab the stuff and throw it back in their car before the light changes. I never could figure that out: If people are such neat freaks that they can't stand to have this stuff in their cars, why are they such slobs to toss it out the window?
Upon further reflection, I formed a different theory about the washed-up water bottles along the beach.
Boaters often take a lot of liquid refreshment with them when they go out on the lake, and for good reason. A long hot day on the lake without proper hydration can cause some serious illness.
Now I've known some slob boaters who have simply deep-sixed beverage cans when they were done with them. I haven't been down there, but my guess is that Lake Erie's bottom is littered with sunken cans and maybe even bottles.
But water bottles are a different breed. They are far lighter than glass bottles and cans. They can blow off boats and if someone deliberately tosses one overboard, chances are it won't fill and sink as readily as a can or glass bottle.
More evidence of this growing problem surfaced during a trip to the Monroe County Fair. As I tossed some trash in a garbage can on the fairgrounds during the end of a long day, one glance showed me that most of the containers in the barrel were from bottled water - and that was before 4-H teams picked out any returnables. And much of the litter in the parking lot was empty water bottles.
That's why there have been moves afoot recently to reduce water bottles from our waste stream.
At the state level, Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing, and Kathleen Law, D-Gibraltar, are pushing for an expansion of the state's bottle bill to cover water bottles. The proposal sits in committee.
Love it or hate it, the spin-off of Michigan's existing bottle deposit bill is that about 95 percent of beverage containers in the state are recycled. In the national context, that's an amazing statistic. But bottled water probably has been cutting into that statistic because bottled water sales have been growing faster than beer, soft drinks or even those "energy" drinks popular with young people.
Meanwhile, some cities - most recently Ann Arbor - have banned commercial bottled water from city events. And some restaurants there have pledged not to sell it. In Monroe, the city has stopped bottling its "Monroe Mist" largely due to budget issues.
Convenience is said to be fueling bottled water sales. It's easier, though more costly, to grab a bottle of water than fill a drinking bottle with tap water, even though half of all bottled water is tap water. The rest is "spring water" from who-knows-where.
We're funny like that. We don't want landfills in our back yards, but we'll buy bottled water at a price that's more costly than gasoline on a per-gallon basis, and toss the bottles, which are made from plastic resin, an oil-based petrochemical. One estimate is that it takes 17 billion gallons of oil a year to supply the plastic bottles for the nearly 9 billion gallons of bottled water we buy each year.
This seems like a no-brainer. Why would we want to pay more than necessary for a commodity that comes from our home faucet, boosts our litter problem, and keeps oil prices high?
Is it convenience, laziness or sheer stupidity?
The temperature and humidity was just right and the sky blended seamlessly with the Lake Erie horizon. A breeze painted the waves with little whitecaps.
It was a perfect time for a walk along the beach.
I only had walked a few hundred feet when I realized we have a problem.
Along the way, just beyond the line where Erie deposits its flotsam and jetsam, I found trash.
But it was trash with a common theme. Most of the wash-ups were empty plastic water bottles.
Some were pretty big, but some were the typical size used by Aquafina or Dasani or any of the other brands.
My first thought was the kind of knee-jerk reaction I have when a driver in front of me tosses a fast food bag out the window or empties his ashtray in the road at a stoplight.
I want to scream "Slob!" out loud or maybe run out and grab the stuff and throw it back in their car before the light changes. I never could figure that out: If people are such neat freaks that they can't stand to have this stuff in their cars, why are they such slobs to toss it out the window?
Upon further reflection, I formed a different theory about the washed-up water bottles along the beach.
Boaters often take a lot of liquid refreshment with them when they go out on the lake, and for good reason. A long hot day on the lake without proper hydration can cause some serious illness.
Now I've known some slob boaters who have simply deep-sixed beverage cans when they were done with them. I haven't been down there, but my guess is that Lake Erie's bottom is littered with sunken cans and maybe even bottles.
But water bottles are a different breed. They are far lighter than glass bottles and cans. They can blow off boats and if someone deliberately tosses one overboard, chances are it won't fill and sink as readily as a can or glass bottle.
More evidence of this growing problem surfaced during a trip to the Monroe County Fair. As I tossed some trash in a garbage can on the fairgrounds during the end of a long day, one glance showed me that most of the containers in the barrel were from bottled water - and that was before 4-H teams picked out any returnables. And much of the litter in the parking lot was empty water bottles.
That's why there have been moves afoot recently to reduce water bottles from our waste stream.
At the state level, Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing, and Kathleen Law, D-Gibraltar, are pushing for an expansion of the state's bottle bill to cover water bottles. The proposal sits in committee.
Love it or hate it, the spin-off of Michigan's existing bottle deposit bill is that about 95 percent of beverage containers in the state are recycled. In the national context, that's an amazing statistic. But bottled water probably has been cutting into that statistic because bottled water sales have been growing faster than beer, soft drinks or even those "energy" drinks popular with young people.
Meanwhile, some cities - most recently Ann Arbor - have banned commercial bottled water from city events. And some restaurants there have pledged not to sell it. In Monroe, the city has stopped bottling its "Monroe Mist" largely due to budget issues.
Convenience is said to be fueling bottled water sales. It's easier, though more costly, to grab a bottle of water than fill a drinking bottle with tap water, even though half of all bottled water is tap water. The rest is "spring water" from who-knows-where.
We're funny like that. We don't want landfills in our back yards, but we'll buy bottled water at a price that's more costly than gasoline on a per-gallon basis, and toss the bottles, which are made from plastic resin, an oil-based petrochemical. One estimate is that it takes 17 billion gallons of oil a year to supply the plastic bottles for the nearly 9 billion gallons of bottled water we buy each year.
This seems like a no-brainer. Why would we want to pay more than necessary for a commodity that comes from our home faucet, boosts our litter problem, and keeps oil prices high?
Is it convenience, laziness or sheer stupidity?
http://www.monroenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080803/NEWS01/587435665
