Tapped Out: The Perils of Bottled Water

Bluesman Howlin

Nearly all such water comes in bottles derived from oil, commonly called PET for polyethylene terephthalate. Nationally only 14.5 percent of PET bottles for non-carbonated drinks were recycled, creating 2 million tons of trash that will not degrade for hundreds of years in landfills. The Container Recycling Institute says overall beverage container recycling has dropped from 53.5 percent in 1992 to 33.5 percent in 2004.

The institute calculates that if we were to go on a national campaign to increase beverage container recycling to 80 percent, the savings in greenhouse gas production would be the equivalent of taking 2.4 million cars off the road for a year. It says if the recycling content of plastic beverage bottles was 25 percent, that would save enough crude oil to electrify 680,000 American homes for a year.

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