Hatin’ on plastic water bottles is all the rage
Forget SUVs and Styrofoam: hip-to-the-times green folk are directing their ire at plastic water bottles. In the last few months, the energy-intensiveness of bottled water — 1.5 million barrels of oil go into making the bottles for the U.S. market each year, and oodles more to transporting the H2O — has seeped into the public consciousness. Big-city mayors have urged residents to stop hitting the bottle, and highfalutin restaurants are serving filtered tap water. Advocates point out that water flows freely in nearly every U.S. home, while 38 billion recyclable plastic vessels are trashed every year. Hoping to cash in on the latest consumer trend, Nestle will roll out its water brands in a bottle made of 30 percent less plastic, while Nalgene has teamed up with water-filtration giant Brita to launch a bottle-reduction campaign called FilterForGood. Then again, some Nalgenes and other hard plastic containers contain the icky chemical compound bisphenol A. Which is why we stick with martinis.
