Monday, June 9, 2008

Day Nine - Bottled up

Today, I called the water delivery company to (try) to cancel our service, since we’ve had a new filter installed on our refrigerator’s water unit, and would no longer be using our water cooler.

How did it go? Picture a dark room with a single, naked bulb swinging from the ceiling… An inquisition… Questions. Never-ending questions… Why?? Why do we want to cancel? I could literally not get off the phone with the customer service rep.

I told her we now had a refrigerator unit.

Well, what about the half-liter bottles?

I told her we were trying to cut down on our use of plastic bottles.

Why? Weren’t they convenient enough? Would we want a different size? A different type of mouth on the bottle?

No, I said. We’re just done. Really. We’re breaking up with you. Just let us go.

According to a site hosted by the Container Recycling Institute, “Every day in the U.S. more than 60 million plastic water bottles are thrown away.”

The site has a running ticker of the number of cans and bottles that have been land-filled, littered and incinerated so far this year. And let me tell you, that sucker is spinning fast. Check it out at http://www.container-recycling.org/

The thing is, I know lots of people who use these bottles as their only source of drinking water. They use them all the time, even when they’re sitting at home. A better solution would be to use the refrigerator unit, or a filter on the kitchen faucet, or even a system like the Brita.

Here’s a site that compares filters:
http://www.waterfiltercomparisons.net/WaterFilter_Comparison.cfm

Think about it: 60,000,000 bottles a year! I know we can do better than that.

Tip for Day Nine – Get a water filter and save plastic water bottles for when you’re on the move.

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