Survey: Should We Promote "Better" Bottled Water?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 01.23.08
Mairi pointed us to a new bottled water that eliminates the PET bottle in favor of a sort of bagged water that requires "75% less energy to produce, and is recyclable. Reports show that 77% of all PET water bottles end up in landfills, and if our packaging gets disposed of, it occupies 96% less landfill space." She also suggests that we would be kidding ourselves if we think that we could convince organizers of events like the Golden Globes to forgo bottled water completely, so that perhaps this is the lesser of two evils.
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That's even less reusable than a bottle!
oh come on. what about a "I don't drink bottled water, but this definitely looks like it would save some resources" choice? The closest one to that is "Well, it does look environmentally better and I do prefer bottled water..."
It's the same kind of question as a incandescent vs. CFL (vs. LED) bulbs. Sure, we could condemn all light bulbs as terrible horrible power wasters. Or we could recognize that there are levels of eco friendliness and take what we can get.
I'm with Andrew on this, having a poll with five different ways to say you don't like it is a tad insulting, especially since there isn't really a legitimate choice for expressing an altogether approving sentiment. Yes, it's not as green as taking your own bottle and filling it from your local tap nor is it as reusable as a PET bottle (though it does acknowledge that reusing PET bottles isn't exactly healthy.) There are also real world situations that will feature bottled water, large concerts, emergency situations, award shows, conferences etc. Some cases it's possible and perfectly fine to bring a bottle of your own water, but not acknowledging that circumstances exist where in bottled water will be used is naive.
Oscar Wilde said "all criticism is autobiography" and perhaps all polls reflect the bias of the pollster, but I clearly put in two questions that left open the option of saying that this was better, including
Well, it does look environmentally better and I do prefer bottled water...
but Andrew has a point.