Feb

Greenwash Of The Week: “Up To 30% From Plants” Bottled Tap Water.

Posted by david under Recycling

Yet another bottled water company trying to ~~greenwash~~ go green by coming up with catchphrases – while leaving the plastic-encapsulated tap water inside their bottles. Dasani, made by Coca-Cola, is just filtered tap water sold in a plastic bottle priced at rates thousands of times higher than water at home costs. Bottled water can cost, depending on the “manufacturer”, anywhere between $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon – and the average price of tap water at your house is about $0.002 per gallon. Talk about a ripoff. Plastic water bottles are disposed of (not recycled) at the rate of 30 million a day and it can take nearly 7 times the amount of water in the bottle to actually make the bottle itself. So, what is a “bottled tap water” company to do when they want to greenwash you? Try to fool you into thinking that their bottles are green because they are partially made out of some sort of plant material – “Up to 30%!” they say. So, it could be 1%? Sounds like a greenwash to me.

There are a few problems with any of these plant-based “plastics”, besides the obvious greenwashing involved. First, how much energy is used to turn plant materials into a plastic that will hold it’s shape and merge with real plastic? Since plastic bottles alone require 17.6 million barrels of oil to make, imagine how much oil it takes to make the energy to turn plants into plastic. I imagine it’s quite a bit, and I will try to find out more info for a future post. Second of all, these plant-based plastics can gum up recycling systems. After all, they aren’t plastic and thus shouldn’t be recycled along with regular bottles – but they still end up in the recycling stream. And because they shouldn’t be recycled, they don’t have a second life and might be ruining the chance of “real” plastic to be used again. This could be making all plastics made with this fake plastic “single-use-only” for all we know. And thirdly, what kind of plants are being used to make this stuff? GMO crops? Plants sprayed with pesticides and fertilizers and thus contaminating the plants, the earth, and our waterways? No thanks, I will pass on the greenwashing.

dasani Greenwash Of The Week: Up To 30% From Plants Bottled Tap Water.

Plant-based plastics have given very ungreen companies a sure-fire way to put together a marketing campaign designed to trick people with their greenwashing. And by wrapping a plastic bottle in a plant, designing their own official plantbottle logo (which means nothing outside the company), and saying “Up to 30% made from plants” they are trying to convince you that tap water in plastic bottles is ok – it’s not. Get yourself a good quality reusable bottle and read my post 12 Reasons To Stop Drinking Bottled Water and learn the facts. Don’t fall for the greenwashing.

How To Choose A Safe Reusable Water Bottle.