If you’re thinking about stopping by Concord, Mass., you’ll want to bring your own reusable bottle. The historic town, which is the birthplace of the Revolutionary War and the home of famous thinker Henry David Thoreau, has a ban the ubiquitous water receptacle.
In Jan. 2013, Concord became the first city in the nation to ban this plastic menace, a charge led by octogenarian Jean Hill and her activist partner Jill Appel.
A documentary of the battle, “Divide in Concord,” premiered in July. Proponents of the ban wanted to curb waste and fossil fuel use. According to the Ban the Bottle website, “Americans used about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year. However, the U.S.’s recycling rate for plastic is only 23 percent, which means 38 billion water bottles – more than $1 billion worth of plastic – are wasted each year.”
Meanwhile, opponents (led by Adriana Cohen, a political commentator) called the ban an intrusion on corporate interests as well as “an attack on freedom,” EcoWatch notes.
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“You have this supremely educated base of people that are focused on ideals. People know their facts. People were only speaking if they knew what they were talking about, which was refreshing. The overall debate would come down to free commerce versus the environment,” documentary director Kris Kaczor says in an interview. “Basically the rights of corporations to make a profit, and for a populous to be able to choose a product that is legal and safe, versus banning a product completely in service of the environment.”
After a campaign that lasted three years, the bottle ban activists won. It now states in section 1 of the city’s water bottle ban bylaws, “It shall be unlawful to sell non-sparkling, unflavored drinking water in single-serving polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles of 1 liter (34 ounces) or less in the Town of Concord on or after January 1, 2013.” Violators of the ban will first receive a warning, a second offense results in a $25 fine, third and following offenses result in a $50 fine per violation.
The debate is still raging and you can read comments surrounding the issue here. For instance, one dissenter of the ban wrote, “I have found, as a resident of Concord, that if I’m out and I or my children want a drink, the only options are sugary drinks!”
DON’T MISS: This Coalition is Confronting a Big Problem with Music Festivals
Still, more and more parts of the country are waking up to the unsustainable reality of plastic use. San Francisco recently followed in Concord’s path becoming the first major American city to ban plastic bottles, and other activists have been inspired to bring the ban to their own towns. (That’s not to mention all the cities and states banning the plastic bottle’s pesky cousin: plastic bags.)
Change, slowly but surely, can be made. As Kaczor says about his documentary’s leading lady, “At our current state in history, people are becoming pretty apathetic and pessimistic about our ability to change, and this is a true example of how one person can make a difference, potentially and ultimately at a global level.”
Tag: plastic bottles
This Coalition is Confronting a Big Problem with Music Festivals
Stick around to the end of a music festival or concert, and the grounds can look like a graveyard of disposable cups and discarded plastic bottles. While it’s not unusual for a concert-goer to go through a few bottles of water or other beverages while enjoying some music, when the party’s over, this plastic pollution seriously adds up.
That’s why, as Rolling Stone reports, the Plastic Pollution Coalition (that’s made up of individuals and institutions dedicated to eliminating plastic waste on a global scale) have made it a mission to stamp out this environmentally harmful, single-use item at concerts.
The coalition’s project, Plastic Free Touring, advises artists such as Jackson Browne, Ben Harper and Crosby, Stills and Nash to reduce their plastic footprint while on the road. The coalition also partnered with this year’s Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, where revelers could purchase stainless steel water bottles and beer cups (and receive a $1 discount for every subsequent beer purchase), which could be used to stay hydrated with free water refill sites.
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Dianna Cohen, eco-activist and Plastic Pollution Coalition co-founder, tells Rolling Stone that she wants to expand this plastic-free initiative outside of the music arena. “This can be extended to sporting venues and schools,” she says. “I’d also like to see venues offer more people options of producing beverages from kegs, large containers and soda fountains.”
She adds that she has a larger goal to wipe out humanity’s plastic bottle habit for good. “Millions and millions of bottles are sold every minute,” she says. (About 2.4 million tons is discarded annually, with 75 percent going straight to the landfill.) “It’s insane, just collective madness.”
Besides the plastic carnage, concerts (and just about any other event that attracts large crowds) use up a lot of other resources — from the countless fliers that get handed out to the amount of carbon that is emitted when people travel to shows.
However, more and more artists and bands such as Radiohead, Drake, Phish, and The Roots are embracing sustainability, utilizing biodiesel tour buses and compostable catering. Large gatherings are opportune moments for musicians and concert organizers to be role models in sustainability. After all, why can’t concerts be fun and work towards the greater good at the same time?
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This Technology Will Let You Recycle Plastic Bottles to Make Anything
We’ve heard of plastic bottles being turned into beanies, jeans and even a house. Now, with this new 3D printer, you can make just about anything you want from the environmental menace.
The Ekocycle Cube 3D printer from 3D Systems uses filament made in part from recycled PET bottles. From it, the printer can make items such as bracelets, cellphone cases, shoes, and whatever these awesome-looking things are. So far, the filament comes in red, black, white and natural (with reports saying more colors will be coming in the future).
Musician and producer will.i.am, the chief creative officer at 3D Systems, teamed up with Coca-Cola to launch the printer, which will retail for $1,199 later this year.
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While price tag may be a bit much, the Black Eyed Peas band member says this is just the beginning of eco-friendly printing technology.
“We will make it cool to recycle, and we will make it cool to make products using recycled materials,” he said. “This is the beginning of a more sustainable 3D-printed lifestyle. Waste is only waste if we waste it.”
He clearly has a point. The plastic bottle is so ubiquitous that the average American home probably has a few lying around the house right now. According to CleanAir.org, 2.4 million tons of PET plastic is discarded a year, with 75 percent going to the landfills.
So whether you’re turning your bottles into bracelets or tossing them in a bin to be reused in some other fashion, please find a way to recycle every single one.
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Coca-Cola Shows There’s Nothing Like a Fun Incentive to Encourage Recycling
Most of us here in America are familiar with recycling and believe it’s the right thing to do. But in some places around the world, there’s no concept of the earth-friendly action whatsoever. And whether this is due to an absence of recycling equipment, a lack of efficient government regulation, or even lower education, the end result is the same: Our planet and the environment suffers.
Take the city of Dhaka, Bangladesh, for example: Its population of 15 million has no concern about recycling at all. So how does one educate an entire urban community about the importance of recycling?
Global soda giant Coca-Cola decided to take a page from the old parenting handbook of tricking kids into doing otherwise boring chores by turning it into a game. As Fast Company notes, Coke created a Pong-like arcade game where it only accepts empty bottles instead of coins.
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You’ll see in the video below that the game was met with wild success. The machine, called the Coca-Cola Happiness Arcade, traveled to six different locations in six days and collected thousands of bottles that will be turned into plastic pellets for re-use.
Grey Dhaka, the ad agency behind the campaign, acknowledged that their Happiness Arcade will be “difficult to value in real ROR (return on recycling!) terms,” but it was more about “awareness raising.”
Granted, this concept isn’t practical on a global scale (and just think of the crazy long lines!), but we think that creative innovations like these surely help to educate the world about our impact on the planet and encourages us all to live more sustainably.
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If You’re Going to San Francisco, Here’s Why You Might Need to Bring Your Own Water Bottle
The city by the bay is definitely an eco-trendsetter. After all, it was the first to institute a ban on plastic bags way back in 2007. (Several other cities and an entire state later followed suit.) It also diverts everything from recyclables to compostables and even unwanted clothes from landfills. And now, it might prohibit the disposable plastic water bottle as well.
The easy-to-transport drinking vessel is currently on the endangered species list in San Francisco. The city’s Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a measure that would ban the sale of plastic water bottles 21 ounces or smaller at events held on city property. If approved a second time by the board and the city’s mayor, the ban would go into effect starting on October 1 for indoor events and in 2016 for outdoor events, SFGate reports.
“We all know with climate change, and the importance of combating climate change, San Francisco has been leading the way to fight for our environment. That’s why I ask you to support this ordinance to reduce and discourage single-use, single-serving plastic water bottles in San Francisco,” said City Supervisor David Chiu, the author of the ordinance. “I want to remind people that not long ago, our world was not addicted to plastic water bottles. Before (the 1990s), for centuries, everybody managed to stay hydrated.”
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Could your city be next to take on this bottled environmental scourge?
This Commonplace Item Went From Trash to Fashion
Did you know that recycled water bottles can be made into a beanie? Or a T-shirt? Or a winter coat? Repreve, an eco-conscious brand of yarn maker Unifi, turns used plastic water bottles and post-industrial waste into everyday clothing and accessories. According to its website, Repreve reclaimed more than 410 million bottles in the U.S. in 2012. Companies such as The North Face, Polartec and Ford use the brand. Who knew that used plastic bottles could be so fashionable?
Repreve recently returned as the official recycling sponsor of this year’s X Games Aspen, and will try to reduce the games’ environmental impact by turning more than 100,000 recycled plastic bottles into signs. The company shot a commercial (see above) with professional snowboarder Elena Hight and is inviting anyone to tweet, Facebook, Instagram or Vine with the hashtag #TurnItGreen about how you recycle or reuse materials and live more sustainably.
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Need Cheap Housing Materials? Look No Further Than Your Local Landfill
It’s the ultimate recycling project: building a house out of discarded plastic bottles. It hasn’t caught on in the U.S. yet, but aid organizations in Africa and Asia are busy erecting plastic-bottle homes and other structures to house people in need. The bottles are simply filled with sand, then laid down like bricks, mortared together with mud or cement. Homes crafted from bottles are bullet-proof, fire-proof and resistant to the elements.
It takes about 14,000 bottles to construct a two-bedroom, 1,200-sq.-ft. home. Just think how many houses could be built with the 47.3 billion plastic bottles that end up in American landfills each year. (More than 3 million.) That’s a lot of cheap housing and a boon for the environment too.
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