Stream Your Event | Partners | Speakers CART ITEMS: - | CHECKOUT

The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water

Watch Full Video | previews

California Academy of Sciences

Info
Bio
Chapters
Preview
Download
Zoom In

Where Does Recycled Plastic Go? To China and Back

01 min 36 sec

Add to Profile

Peter Gleick, author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, briefly summarizes the economics of shipping recycled plastic to China. Once in China, plastic waste is used to manufacture other products that are then exported back to the U.S.
Watch Full Program

52 min 28 sec

Add to Profile

There are 3 comments on this program

Please or register to post a comment.

Previous FORAtv comments:

rocketdog

Posted: 11.05.10, 01:17 PM

@BlogShag: Here, I'm giving you an internet pat on the back. Thank you for recycling. If your tap water sucks that much, by all means, drink bottled. But while I'm sorry there is apparently fetid sewage spewing out of your faucet, most people have access to perfectly drinkable water from their municipal systems. Many best-selling bottled water brands on the market are essentially just re-bottled tap water themselves, and there's no evidence whatsoever that it's any healthier for you. Besides, I would bet that the #1 reason most people buy bottled isn't for the taste at all, but for the convenience. The reason for the anti-bottled water backlash is that a huge number of people are paying out the nose for a product they can get for practically free just about anywhere. This would be stupid but harmless if it weren't for the significant environmental impact involved. Although there are people like you and me who recycle our plastic, there are plenty of people who don't, and that's a problem for everyone in the long run. There's also the high environmental cost of transporting all of that water from the bottling line to retail stores. Criticizing the pointlessness of the product for many customers isn't meant to single out people like you, who drink it because you don't have a better option. It's an effort to reduce consumption of bottled water among the general population that does -- and thus, scale back the product's fairly significant environmental impact. Is that really such a bad thing?

BlogShag

Posted: 11.01.10, 01:42 PM

The "smart" people don't get it.

Anyone who has tasted my gross tap water would know why I purchase bottled water. And I recycle my bottles and other people's bottles OK? I can't help that there are so many lazy people in the rich modern countries that don't want to recycle. In my opinion, on this subject, the people that are stupid are the people on the pedestal that claim to have all the smarts and education. If they want to drink gross tasting tap water, more power to them, but that's the main reason people drink bottled water. IT TASTES AND SMELLS MUCH BETTER.

NishantSingh

Posted: 10.14.10, 09:26 PM

How can consumers continue to be so dumb? Industries pollute water bodies, then "purify", bottle and sell them to us in exchange of hard work (money). Same is beginning to happen to air.