The blog formerly known as   Fake Plastic Fish

Category Archives: Issues Bottled Water

July 9, 2009

Bottled Water Problem – It’s Not Just The Bottle!

Bottled water companies are under attack. They know their plastic bottles are a problem, and they are working around the clock to fix it. Either by changing the bottles themselves or changing their marketing or both. PepsiCo, for example, just launched it’s “Eco-Fina” bottle to contain Aquafina bottled water. According to Pepsi’s press release, the Eco-fina bottle weighs less than any other plastic bottle and contains 50% less plastic.

Is this enough?

If you ask me, no! Because the problems with bottled water extend beyond the plastic bottle. And yesterday, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released their report, “BOTTLED WATER FDA Safety and Consumer Protections Are Often Less Stringent Than Comparable EPA Protections for Tap Water,” basically finding the same thing. Plastic bottles are a problem. But they are not the only problem with bottled water.

So here’s what the Go… Read the rest

May 16, 2009

Coming to Bay to Breakers tomorrow? Bring your own (H2O) Bottle!

For Immediate Release

Costumed Crusaders Ask Bay to Breakers Runners to BYOB – Bring Your Own Bottle for Water, That Is.

Anti-plastic environmentalists to promote reducing and recycling plastic during B2B 2009

Contact: Beth Terry, Fake Plastic Fish, beth[at]fakeplasticfish[dot]com Eli Saddler, OceanHealth.Org, eli[at]oceanhealth[dot]org

San Francisco, CA — May 17, 2009 – Bay to Breakers hosts the “world’s largest footrace” annually with as many as 100,000 runners and can generate vast amounts of plastic pollution that harms our oceans. During the event, many participants opt for bottled water in single-use plastic containers instead of bringing their own reusable water bottles. This year, anti-plastic environmentalists are attending Bay to Breakers as costumed crusaders to remind participants to bring their own reusable water bottles and bags to the event rather than using single-… Read the rest

February 26, 2009

Antimony – Another reason to avoid bottled water… and polar fleece?

Bottled water sucks. Aside from the moral issue of privatizing what should be a public trust, the plastic containers are made from oil, a non-renewable resource, and last virtually forever in the environment. We know this. We know about the waste from plastic water bottles and the fuel that it takes to ship them. We know we should be drinking tap water and filling up our reusable bottles if we want it to go.

But some of us, taking the REDUCE, REUSE mantra to heart, refill those disposable plastic water or soda bottles instead of using a non-plastic container. It’s one way to keep plastic out of the landfill, right? True, but it might not be the healthiest idea.

Last night, Martin from the Plasticless blog posted a video demonstrating how to boil water in a plastic bottle (the typical #1 PET disposable bottle) and wondered if this practice was safe. He, like most of us, had heard that heating food in plastic is a no-no, yet he had stumbled upon instruc… Read the rest

September 24, 2008

Sitting with a plastic water bottle

Yesterday, Allie wrote about the problem of keeping hydrated while traveling. Not realizing she could carry her Kleen Kanteen through security, she ended up purchasing bottled water. And apparently, she is far from alone. A couple of days ago, USA Today published an article about the environmental issues around bottled water production and waste that begins with the author’s troubles at the airport.

Last night, I encountered this dilemma in a very unexpected place: a meditation hall. My friend Nancy and I went to sit with and hear a talk by teacher Pamela Wilson, given at a Unitarian Church in Berkeley. I’d had a stressful cab ride over and was happy to sit and relax into the moment, take a breath, and slowly open my eyes as Wilson began to speak with the audience. Her voice was calm and serene.

And then… oh my god!

She pull out a disposable plastic water bottle and…

holy crap! drank from it!!!!

What do you do when reality is ri… Read the rest

August 26, 2008

Searching for plastic-free water at Outside Lands wears me out.

I love music more than ice cream. Even more than fudge sauce. And to me, the band Radiohead is like magic. I don’t understand how they make the exquisite and sometimes excruciating sounds that they do. I just know that as long as there are humans on this planet whose organized noise can move me to tears every single time I hear it, there must be hope for us.

So for a few months, I’ve been really looking forward to seeing my first Radiohead show live at the SF Outside Lands music festival in Golden Gate Park. And I was also pleased that this festival was being billed as a green event and planned to visit a section they called Ecolands, where there would be all kinds of “green” organizations and vendors measuring carbon footprints, collecting recycling (including old cell phones), and serving up organic food.

So I wasn’t really worried when I got to the festival entrance on Friday and was asked (after my bag was searched) to em… Read the rest

July 16, 2008

My happy penguin soda maker!

Back in October, I wrote about the Penguin soda maker from SodaStream. It seemed like a great way to have soda without all the plastic bottle waste. I won’t go into the full details again. Please read my original Penguin post here. At the time, there were two drawbacks to the machine: the price (over $200) and the disposable plastic flavor sample packs that came with it. So I put it out of my mind until a few weeks ago, when temperatures in Oakland hit the 90’s and all of us without air conditioning were melting. “Wow,” I thought. “I sure could use a cold one.” In fact, I went out and bought a bottle (glass) of Italian soda at Whole Foods, something I rarely do because I just don’t want to contribute to the environmental impacts of shipping water.

So I was thrilled and surprised a few days later to receive an email from Kristin Harp of SodaStream offering to send me one. She had read my blog post about the Penguin an… Read the rest

May 1, 2008

I can has floor?

So, with Beth away, I have the floor. Actually, the cats have the floor. They have pretty much the whole apartment. But I should vacuum the floor to protect them from nasty chemicals.

OK, so I’m digressing already. Unlike my previous filling-in-for-Beth posts, this one won’t have a big, unifying theme, like polar bears or general forgiveness. Instead, it will be a bunch of short notes on various plastic- and sustainability-related matters as I’ve been dealing with them. There won’t be a lot of links or pictures, either, because they take a long time to insert, and unlike Beth, I don’t like to, and can’t, stay up all night to write the post. If it were totally up to me, I would just make my supper, make my lunch for tomorrow, and then sit down on the couch with the newspapers and, I would hope, the cats. But Beth has committed me with today’s post. Alternatively, I’d write the post over the weekend, but … Read the rest

February 23, 2008

VBW Day a guest post by Michael, aka terrible person

“I saved Latin. What did you ever do?” — Rushmore

So (I find myself beginning almost anything I write these days with the word “so”. I may have picked it up from my high school Russian teacher, my favorite teacher ever, who was German. Or it may be a translation of “Hwaet”, the Old English word that begins the poem “Beowulf”, which can be and has been translated a hundred different ways, but basically means, “Attention please, everybody! I’m telling a story here!”)

So, those of you who have been reading FPF for a couple of months might remember the post I wrote during Beth’s absence on a retreat (and for the constantly multiplying new readers, here it is) in which I lamented the amount of plastic waste at the law firm where I work as an assistant librarian, especially the number of Firm-provided bottles of water consumed, despite the availability of delicious fil… Read the rest

October 25, 2007

Think outside the Biota bottle

Marika sent me an e-mail a few days ago asking what I thought of the new Biota water, which is the first water bottled in a compostable corn-based bottle. This issue is probably moot because according to Biota’s site, the company is out of business, having been “stomped To Death By UPS Capital, A Division of United Parcel Service, one of the World’s Largest contributors to Global Warming.” However, a note at the bottom of this announcement suggests that Biota water may be granted a second life, and if not Biota, surely another company will takes its place. So I think it’s important for me to explain why I would not buy this “planet friendly” beverage which was all the rage at the 79th ACADEMY AWARDS and was even chosen as a sponsor for the Hollywood Premiere of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

According to the company, what makes Biota so green is its bottle. It’s made from Nat… Read the rest

October 11, 2007

Still thinking outside the bottle…

I was there outside Oakland City Hall Wednesday morning to kick off the nationwide “Think Outside The Bottle” campaign. Similar press conferences were being held in other cities around the U.S. at the same time. Here are excerpts from the San Francisco Chronicle article that appeared today, supplemented with photos from my camera:

Bay Area water fight: bottled vs. tap Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Bottled water, bad. Tap water, good.

That was the message that tap-water advocates delivered on the steps of Oakland City Hall on Wednesday as part of a nationwide campaign to persuade cities, consumers and restaurants to dump bottled water in favor of old-fashioned municipal water.

Not only is bottled water more expensive, said a group of local government leaders and officials for Corporate Accountability International, the nonprofit sponsoring the campaign, but it often comes from th… Read the rest