Glass and plastic and imports, oh my

I took this photo on the weekend, in a big department store in the city. The more greenie I become, the more stuff like this disturbs me.

In just a few metres, we’ve got water from:

• Australia, in plastic bottles (top right, middle left)
• Australia, in glass bottles (middle right)
• Fiji, in plastic bottles (top left)
• Italy, in glass bottles (bottom right)
• Norway, in designer glass bottles

All just in case you get thirsty and can’t wait 10 minutes to find a tap or ask for a glass of water somewhere. You can click on the photo to see a larger version on my Flickr account if you’d like to see the labels.

Think of all that water, being shipped and trucked around the world. I can’t figure out if the plastic or the glass is worse – glass is more easily recycled, but it’s heavier so adds to the transport costs and pollution.

The water from Norway is the heaviest and most well-travelled of the bunch. But I reckon the stuff from Fiji is the worst: in spite of the company making some minimal efforts to green their business, that doesn’t change the fact that one third of Fijians don’t have access to clean drinking water. Yet 130 million litres of water are exported from Fiji every year.

I don’t see how we can justify buying water from overseas when so many people don’t even have tap water to drink or cook with. If this bugs you as much as it bugs me, here’s what to do:

• get hold of a reusable bottle and fill it from your tap at home to take with you when you go out
• drink tap water at home and and at work (get a filter if the tap water’s no good in your area)
• if you find yourself in a situation where you must buy bottled water, at least buy Australian and make sure you recycle the bottle

And finally, consider making a donation to people trying to build wells in developing nations. It doesn’t cost much, and yet it can make a huge difference to people’s lives.