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- A soccer player with one of our bottles
Did you know that Americans each drank an average of 218 bottles of water in 2007? bottles – 66 billion, in fact! Only 23% of them are recycled so on a daily basis, a staggering 140 million disposable plastic bottles go to landfills in the USA. That’s enough, laid end to end, to reach from New Jersey to China and back every day.
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- A soccer player with one of our bottles
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- bottled water bottles laid end to end from Xhina to the US
It doesn’t take an engineering degree to understand that this is a problem. It is extremely wasteful. To begin with, finite natural resources like water and oil are being consumed in the manufacturing of bottled water. It takes 4 ounces of oil and 51 ounces of water to make one 17 ounce bottle of water! Then after their use, 50 billion disposable plastic water bottles are dumped in landfills each year where they will take over 700 years to decompose.
There is a simple solution to this problem. Drink tap water instead of bottled water and use a reusable bottle when you are on-the-go. Even if you filter and flavor your tap water, you will save money because bottled water is 1000 times more expensive than tap water. There are many reusable bottles on the market today. For a high performance, high quality water bottle, try a stainless steel bottle from Back2Tap.
When the Patriots Path Council called to invite Back2Tap to their Jamboree celebrating 100 years of Boy Scouts, I didn’t really know what to expect. Preparing for the “jambo,” I began to wonder whether any boys would visit a table presenting the evils of bottled water when they could be spear throwing, mountain boarding, bullwhip cracking, or watching an army tank run over a car.
In spite of having about 175 cool activities to choose from, a couple hundred of the 4300 scouts and leaders did find time to spend at the Back2Tap table this past Saturday. Every single boy and leader listened intently, asked questions, and seemed genuinely excited about our campaign for getting back to drinking tap water and using reusable bottles. This was definitely the best crowd I’ve ever worked with as an exhibitor. I also learned a lot – from the challenges of having private well water to the best type of carabiner.
Interestingly, even these outdoorsy community-minded folks who had reusable bottles clipped to their belts weren’t familiar with the astounding facts about bottled water waste. Many of them told us that if people knew about the:
• 140 million disposable bottles going to landfills everyday,
• 700 years it takes for plastic to decompose,
• 4 ounces of oil it takes to make each disposable bottle,
• 1000 times greater cost of bottled water, and
• more stringent regulatory oversight of tap water compared to bottled water,
they would be persuaded to drink tap water from reusable bottles instead of bottled water. Most people just don’t know about the hidden costs of their consumer choices. To illustrate these impacts, we had a sequencing activity where scouts put the 18 steps in the Life Cycle of a Disposable Plastic Water Bottle in order (see photo). Impacts on the environment were obvious at many steps in the Life Cycle. Before leaving, they were also able to take our Bottled Water IQ Test to see how much they had learned.
Obviously, there is a lot more work to do getting these facts and concepts out to people. Most of the scouts and scout leaders left our exhibit table eager to spread the Back2Tap message with the rest of their troop and with their communities. This is exactly the type of help the Back2Tap movement needs because it is not a message that large multi-national corporations with large advertising budgets is going to sponsor. It will take community leaders like scouts, teachers, PTO members, municipal volunteers, and green activists spreading the word, community by community. To find out how to help foster the Back2Tap movement, visit our community page.
Congratulations to the Patriots Path Council and the participating scout troops for organizing such an exciting and inspiring event. It was an honor to meet and talk with so many of you – thank you for sharing your opinions and suggestions with Back2Tap.
1 Billion. That is the number of disposable plastic bottles that could be kept out of landfills every year if just 10% of the students in the US, K-12, would switch to reusable bottles. This number is hard to believe and hard to visualize, but we’ve crunched the numbers and it’s true. The solution to this staggering amount of plastic waste is to reuse. By getting your children’s school to promote reusable bottles, you can help them “Join the Reusolution” and save that billion bottles.
Eliminating 10% of the disposable plastic bottles used by school children would also save 31 million gallons of oil, almost 400 million gallons of water, and 12 billion balloons worth (or 120 billion grams) of CO2 each year. The resources it takes to make these bottles is surprising, especially when you add them all up.
Collectively, parents would save over $25 million dollars in the first year by switching to tap water-based drinks from single serving drinks in disposable plastic bottles. This more than justifies the purchase of good quality reusable bottles.
To foster completely litter-less lunches, Back2Tap is offering reusable sandwich wraps and snack bags as well as custom-logoed stainless steel bottles for your school’s green fundraiser this year. Save money, save the planet - Join the Reusolution!
OK, I haven’t seen the movie “The Age of Stupid” yet, and from the looks of it, it won’t be easy to find it in a theatre nearby for quite a while, if ever. There are so many interesting eco-films out there that never come to a theatre near me. What’s up with that? In this day and age, it seems downright ridiculous and wrong to drive 45 minutes on a highway to see a movie, especially a green flick!
I’ve read three reviews of this movie so far this week: one says it’s overboard gloomy, one says it’s a wake up call, and one reports that it has already inspired a huge greenhouse gas reduction campaign in Great Britain called 10:10 (reduce emissions by 10% by 2010 – that would be in a few months!).
As a co-founder of Back2Tap, I figure I’ve got to see “The Age of Stupid” because it rails on people who think they are green simply because they recycle their disposable plastic bottles. The movie makes the point that it isn’t going to be as simple as recycling more or buying organic. We’re going to have to “reinvent” the way we live in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Thankfully, there is one lifestyle change we can all make without much effort – the way we drink water and use disposable plastic bottles. Tap water takes 800 times less energy to deliver than bottled water according to “The Age of Stupid.” We can all drink tap water from reusable bottles instead of bottled water and significantly reduce our waste of resources and carbon footprint. That is the primary message Back2Tap shares with schools, groups, and anyone who will listen. Join our Reusolution!
Many consumers feel that the price of bottled water is worth the convenience that the bottles provide. The fact of the matter is that the price of a single 18 ounce bottle of water is enough to buy 100 gallons of tap water. That takes care of the price factor. In an effort to counteract the convenience factor of bottled water, Back2Tap offers customizable and reusable stainless steel water bottles. With the price and convenience factors of bottled water now in perspective, you do the math… Is bottled water really as convenient as it used to seem?
Oil consumption is one of the main concerns of the environmental “Green” movement. It is a valuable and finite natural resource. Over the course of one year, 17 million barrels of oil are wasted in the production of plastic water bottles. That same amount of oil could be used for much more necessary and productive reasons. For example, the oil used for one year of water bottle production could be used to fuel 1,000,000 cars for that same year. By utilizing Back2Tap’s reusable stainless steel water bottles, we can do our part to help conserve our oil supply for future generations.
The consumption of oil releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into Earth’s atmosphere and contributes to global warming. Power plants, cars, buildings, and factories release immense amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Driving a hybrid vehicle in one way to reduce both fuel consumption and harmful emissions. Surprisingly, water bottle production plants produce and release 2.5 million tons of unnecessary carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere every year. By using reusable stainless steel water bottles from Back2Tap, we can do our part to reduce the rate of global warming. These stainless steel water bottles serve the same environmental purpose as hybrid vehicles. They help to reduce the amount of oil consumed and the amount of harmful emissions released into the atmosphere.
