Story of Bottled Water -- Coming March 22

Coming March 22: The Story of Bottled Water. “Cities all over are spending millions of dollars to deal with all the plastic bottles we throw out. What if we spent that money improving our water systems or better yet, preventing pollution to begin with?”

PPI is quoted in the accompanying script:

Three-quarters of the waste material that local governments are responsible for managing in North America is products and packaging; the costs of collecting PET bottles alone runs about $900 per ton. That amounts to welfare for the makers of products and packaging. Citizens and their governments would be better served if those funds were supporting schools, police and parks, and other services that the market cannot or will not provide, like public water fountains … In a time of tight budgets many local governments are asking why taxpayers and ratepayers, and not producers and consumers, are the ones paying to pick up products and associated packaging ‘designed for the dump.’ The costs of recycling and litter clean up should be the responsibility of producers and included in the purchase price.