Copyright: Getty Images

Researchers were astounded when, in the fall of 2007, they discovered that the year-round ice pack in the Arctic Ocean had lost some 20 percent of its mass in just two years, setting a new record low since satellite imagery began documenting the terrain in 1978. Without action to stave off climate change, some scientists believe that, at that rate, all of the year-round ice in the Arctic could be gone by as early as 2030.

This massive reduction has allowed an ice-free shipping lane to open through the fabled Northwest Passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland. While the shipping industry—which now has easy northern access between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans—may be cheering this “natural” development, scientists worry about the impact of the resulting rise in sea levels around the world.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of leading climate scientists, sea levels have risen some 3.1 millimeters per year since 1993. And the United Nations Environment Program predicts that, by 2010, some 80 percent of people will live within 62 miles of the coast, with about 40 percent living within 37 miles of a coastline.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) reports that low-lying island nations, especially in equatorial regions, have been hardest hit by this phenomenon, and some are threatened with total disappearance. Rising seas have already swallowed up two uninhabited islands in the Central Pacific. On Samoa, thousands of residents have moved to higher ground as shorelines have retreated by as much as 160 feet. And islanders on Tuvalu are scrambling to find new homes as salt water intrusion has made their groundwater undrinkable while increasingly strong hurricanes and ocean swells have devastated shoreline structures.

WWF says that rising seas throughout tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world have inundated coastal ecosystems, decimating local plant and wildlife populations. In Bangladesh and Thailand, coastal mangrove forests—important buffers against storms and tidal waves—are giving way to ocean water.

Unfortunately, even if we curb global warming emissions today, these problems are likely to get worse before they get better. According to marine geophysicist Robin Bell of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, sea levels rise by about 1/16” for every 150 cubic miles of ice that melts off one of the poles.

“That may not sound like a lot, but consider the volume of ice now locked up in the planet’s three greatest ice sheets,” she writes in a recent issue of Scientific American. “If the West Antarctic ice sheet were to disappear, sea level would rise almost 19 feet; the ice in the Greenland ice sheet could add 24 feet to that; and the East Antarctic ice sheet could add yet another 170 feet to the level of the world’s oceans: more than 213 feet in all.” Bell underscores the severity of the situation by pointing out that the 150-foot tall Statue of Liberty could be completely submerged within a matter of decades.

CONTACTS: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), www.ipcc.ch; WWF, www.panda.org; Earth Institute at Columbia University, www.earth.columbia.edu.

Dear EarthTalk: I want to offer my employees a 401(k) plan that is socially and environmentally responsible. Are there such plans and, if so, where do I look? - CJ Hughes, Queens, NY

Copyright: Getty Images

Even though socially responsible investing (SRI) has been around for decades, only recently have some companies begun to offer their employees greener options for 401(k) retirement investment accounts.

According to Rona Fried of SustainableBusiness.com, SRI options for retirement plans are still only offered to about 20 percent of employees, but that’s changing fast. One survey found that more than two-thirds of employees want such choices. And a 2007 survey by the Social Investment Forum found that 60 percent of benefit plan sponsors polled plan to include SRI options for retirement funds by 2010.

Retirement accounts are big business in the U.S.: Some 50 million Americans have invested $2.5 trillion in 401(k) plans to date. With so few SRI options out there now and employees eager to make their savings work for the environment, greener 401(k) plans are sure to take a bigger and bigger slice of the pie moving forward. “It’s a matter of simple supply and demand,” says Paul Hilton of Calvert Funds, which currently offers one SRI retirement fund option but plans to add two more within the next couple of years. “Corporations are responding to the increasing desire of Americans to invest with their values.”

Right now health care and government agencies are those most likely to include an SRI option for employees’ retirement accounts, but a handful of large companies have gotten in on the act as well. For instance, chipmaker Intel began offering its employees an SRI retirement plan option eight years ago.

“In 2000, we were trying to create a culture of corporate social responsibility and it made sense for us to practice what we preach by including this option in our retirement plan,” says Dave Stangis, Intel’s director of corporate responsibility. “In addition, Intel itself is a top holding in many SRI mutual funds and we wanted to reinforce that with our employees. It’s a way for us to be a role model.”

Still, most plans give employees only a limited number of funds to choose from, often from Calvert and another SRI mutual fund leader, Domini. Both firms ply the three main tenets of SRI: (1) rigorous research to assess the social and environmental integrity of companies being considered for inclusion in an investment portfolio; (2) using investors’ positions as stockholders (i.e. owners) of companies invested in to advocate for good corporate citizenship (often through the introduction of corporate resolutions); and (3) channeling affordable credit to needy communities ill-served by traditional lenders to rebuild neighborhoods and create jobs. SRI funds are also increasingly making “early stage” investments in new companies on the cutting edge of environmental progress, such as alternative energy companies.

In order to help diversify the marketplace for SRI retirement plans, consultant Rob Thomas started Social(k) in 2005 to offer companies a full array of SRI options for their 401(k) plans. Social(k) offers 140 different SRI funds from which employees at participating companies can choose. Thomas’s goal is to offer as many funds as possible and become the one-stop shop for retirement investing. Companies can offer either Social(k) alone, or as a secondary option alongside an existing 401(k) plan.

CONTACTS: SustainableBusiness.com, www.sustainablebusiness.com; Calvert Funds, www.calvert.com; Domini Social Investments, www.domini.com; Social(k), www.socialk.com.

Dear EarthTalk: How much of an effect, if any, does the carbon dioxide in carbonated beverages have on global warming?- Michael Holmes, Shenandoah, VA

A typical 12-ounce can of soda contains up to six grams (.013 pounds) of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas, which either escapes into the atmosphere from the liquid upon opening, or from your body after you consume the contents. So yes, drinking carbonated beverages does contribute to your “carbon footprint,” but only ever so slightly.

To provide some context, every time you burn a gallon of gas driving from point A to B in your car, about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide wafts skyward (if you find this hard to believe, visit the U.S. Department of Energy’s fuel economy website at: www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/co2.shtml). So, extrapolating out, a typical car commute to work produces upwards of 700 times the greenhouse gases as drinking that can of Coke.

But cans and bottles of carbonated (or non-carbonated) drinks are still no friends of the environment. The production and distribution of single-serving beverages of all kinds generates untold millions of tons of greenhouse gases and other pollutants every year, while also wasting billions of gallons of fresh water. And once the drinks have been consumed, all those cans and plastic bottles have to go somewhere.

Some communities are diligent enough to capture more than half of all such containers for recycling—an activity which itself generates significant amounts of greenhouse gases—but that still means that more than 40 billion cans are ending up in landfills each year, or even worse, as litter, according to data compiled by the non-profit Container Recycling Institute (CRI).

Each un-recycled can or bottle then must be replaced by an equivalent one made from virgin materials. CRI reports that just the manufacture of these replacement aluminum cans each year generates about 3.5 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions, while also causing other environmental damage from the extraction of the bauxite from which aluminum is made. Even a larger amount of resources are used (petroleum-based in this case) and greenhouse gases emitted from the significant number of plastic single-serving drink bottles that are thrown away and not recycled each year.

Consumers can take a bite out of all this resource waste and pollution by remembering that, first and foremost, water is the least costly and healthiest beverage of all (on virtually all personal and ecological counts). And water drawn from the kitchen faucet requires no disposable packaging or shipping to get there, thanks to the highly efficient water-delivery systems that have been in place in developed countries in the vast majority of communities for a very long time.

For those who cannot get by without their soft drinks—carbonated or otherwise—the best way to lower that carbon footprint is to buy them in large containers and parse out servings in cups or glasses. A typical two-liter (67.6 ounce) plastic soda bottle holds five and a half times the liquid of a 12-ounce container and over four times that of a 16-ounce container, so it is easy to imagine the resource savings over time.

CONTACTS: Container Recycling Institute, www.container-recycling.org, fueleconomy.gov, www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/co2.shtml.

Dear EarthTalk: Green groups don’t seem to discuss human population growth, but I think the biggest issue confronting the planet is the collective demand we put upon it. And what is the difference in impact between population growth in Third World countries, which are poor, against that in the U.S., where we consume and waste so much more?  - Ronald Marks, via e-mail
Copyright: Getty Images

The global rate of human population growth peaked around 1963, but the number of people living on Earth—and sharing finite resources like water and food—has grown by more than two-thirds since then, topping out at over 6.6 billion today. Human population is expected to exceed nine billion by 2050. Environmentalists don’t dispute that many if not all of the environmental problems—from climate change to species loss to overzealous resource extraction—are either caused or exacerbated by population growth.

“Trends such as the loss of half of the planet’s forests, the depletion of most of its major fisheries, and the alteration of its atmosphere and climate are closely related to the fact that human population expanded from mere millions in prehistoric times to over six billion today,” says Robert Engelman of Population Action International.

According to Population Connection, population growth since 1950 is behind the clearing of 80 percent of rainforests, the loss of tens of thousands of plant and wildlife species, an increase in greenhouse gas emissions by some 400 percent and the development or commercialization of as much as half of the Earth’s surface land. The group expects that half of the world’s population will be exposed to “water-stress” or “water-scarce” conditions feared to “intensify difficulties in meeting…consumption levels, and wreak devastating effects on our delicately balanced ecosystems” in the coming decades.

In less developed countries, lack of access to birth control, as well as cultural traditions that encourage women to stay home and have babies, lead to rapid population growth. The result is ever increasing numbers of poor people across Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere suffering from malnourishment, lack of clean water, overcrowding and inadequate shelter, and AIDS and other diseases.

And while population numbers in most developed nations are leveling off or diminishing today, high levels of consumption make for a huge drain on resources. Americans, who represent only four percent of world population, consume 25 percent of all resources. Industrialized countries also contribute far more to climate change, ozone depletion and overfishing than developing countries. And as more and more residents of developing countries get access to Western media, or immigrate to the U.S., they want to emulate the consumption-heavy lifestyles they see on their televisions and read about on the Internet.

Given the overlap of population growth and environmental problems, many would like to see a change in U.S. policy on global family planning. In 2001, George W. Bush instituted what some call the “global gag rule,” whereby foreign organizations that provide or endorse abortions are denied funding support. Environmentalists consider that stance to be shortsighted, that support for family planning is the most effective way to check population growth and relieve pressure on the planet’s environment accordingly.

CONTACTS: Population Action International, www.populationaction.org; Population Connection, www.populationconnection.org.

BOTTLED WATER BACKLASH
Bottled Water's Days are Numbered, says leading Environmental Magazine

Bottled water is out, and tap water is in, says the May/June 2008 cover story of E – The Environmental Magazine (now posted at: www.emagazine.com). Call it reverse snob appeal. These days, it’s the tap water enthusiasts, concerned about the environment, who get to act self-righteous. Just like it has become cool to bring your own cloth bags to the grocery store and your own mug to the coffee shop, the reusable water bottle is the hip, new eco-accessory.

In Canada, the bottled water issue has reached the level of an “uprising.” College students are staging protests -­ declaring “bottled-water free zones” on campus. High school activists are raising questions about why their school board members are locking them into a contract with Coke or Pepsi (makers of Aquafina and Dasani bottled water) when they have access to drinking fountains for free. Some of the students have jokingly started selling bottled air for $1.

Perhaps Richard Girard, a corporate researcher for the Ottawa-based Polaris Institute, says it best. “This movement is gaining momentum because the general public is starting to figure out bottled water is a scam,” he says.

Bottled Waste

Bottled water is also contributing to huge amounts of waste and energy consumption. It takes 15 million barrels of oil per year to make all of the plastic water bottles in America, according to the Container Recycling Institute. Sending those bottles by air and truck uses even more fossil fuel. Once people drain the bottles, they rarely recycle them because they’re often purchased at big concert venues or airports with no recycling bins. CRI says eight out of 10 water bottles end up in the landfill. The bottles that drift from landfills or end up as litter in streams are washing out to sea to form a huge raft of plastic debris in the center of the Pacific that is estimated to be twice the size of Texas.

It takes 1,000 years for plastic bottles to break down, CRI estimates. States could add deposit bills that would increase recycling efforts, but few have taken the initiative.

Don't Refill the Bottle!

Consumers aren't advised to reuse store-bought bottled water, or even plastic bottles made for refilling due to dangers of leaching chemicals. Research shows that clear bottles made of polycarbonate plastic (such as the original 32-ounce Nalgene) can leach bisphenol-A (BPA), an endocrine disrupting chemical that acts like estrogen in the body. Since BPA has been linked to low sperm counts and an increased risk of breast and prostate cancer, scientists suggest avoiding reusable bottles made from plastic. They also raise serious concerns about the potential for other plastic chemicals to leach out of typical PET bottled water bottles­especially if they sit in the hot sun.

Some of the best refillable bottle options come from the stainless guaranteed-not-to-leach SIGG bottles made in Switzerland. The trend away from bottled water may also boost sales of home filters. Water quality experts say most tap water is fine to drink straight from the faucet ­- especially in cities like San Francisco, Seattle, New York City and Denver, where water comes from pristine mountain reservoirs.

Turning Back to Tap

It makes sense for anyone turning back to tap to become educated about the local public water supply. And since the Environmental Protection Agency requires frequent water quality reports, the data is easy to find. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) makes it easy with its Tap Water Database. You can plug in your zip code and find out whether your local water system is up to par.

Now that more people are trying kick the bottled water habit, groups like Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and EWG hope this new awareness will translate into more support for public water supplies, and for water conservation in general.

Dear EarthTalk: My old computer finally bit the dust and I am in the market for a replacement. Are there any particularly “green” computers for sale these days? -- Brian Smith, Nashua, NH

Pic courtesy: “Ack Ook, courtesy Flickr."
Thanks in part to pressure from non-profits like Greenpeace International—which has published quarterly versions of its landmark “Guide to Greener Electronics” since 2006—computer makers now understand that consumers care about the environmental footprints of the products they use.

The latest version of Greenpeace’s guide gives high marks to Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony and Dell for increasing the recyclability of their computers and reducing toxic components and so-called “e-waste” (refuse from discarded electronic devices and components). The group also credits Apple, HP and Fujitsu for making strides toward greener products and manufacturing processes, but emphasizes that even such top ranked companies have lots of room for improvement when it comes to the environment.

PC Magazine, the leading computer publication for consumer and business users, recently assessed dozens of personal computers according to environmental standards it developed in-house based on energy efficiency, recyclability and the toxicity of components. The publication also factored in various “green” certification schemes such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s EnergyStar program, the European Union’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, Taiwan’s Greenmark and the computer industry’s own Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT).

The top choices for green desktop computers, according to PC, are Apple’s Mac Mini, Zonbu’s Desktop Mini, HP Compaq’s 2710p and dc7800, Lenovo’s ThinkCentre a61e, and Dell’s OptiPlex 755. As for laptops, the greenest current models include Dell’s Latitude D630, the Everex Zonbu, Fujitsu’s LifeBook S6510, and Toshiba’s Tecra A9-S9013.

Perhaps more important than the green-ness of your new computer is what you do with the old one. Stuffing it into the trash or setting it out for curbside pick-up may be the worst thing you can do with an outdated computer, as heavy metals and other toxins inevitably get free and get into surrounding soils and water. If the machine still works, donate it to a local school that can put it to use, or to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, either of which can re-sell it to help fund their programs. Another option is to donate it to the National Cristina Foundation, which places outdated technology with needy non-profits.

Once you’ve gotten rid of an old computer and outfitted yourself with a spiffy new green one, you might just want to score a few green accessories. Brooklyn, New York’s Verdant Computing, which bills itself as a purveyor of “the greenest computer products on the web,” sells remanufactured ink and toner cartridges, laptop cases made from recycled plastic, GreenDisk CDs packaged in recycled plastic jewel cases, solar-powered MP3 accessories, energy-saving printers and even a software program, GreenPrint, which modifies the print programs on your computer to economize on paper and ink/toner use. Verdant also has most products shipped to consumers directly from the manufacturers to save re-shipping.

CONTACTS: Greenpeace International, www.greenpeace.org; PC magazine, www.pcmag.com; National Cristina Foundation, www.cristina.org; Verdant Computing, www.verdantcomputing.com.

Dear EarthTalk: Are there any efforts underway to green the air travel industry? It seems to me that it must be one dirty business from a pollution standpoint. -- Elias Corey, Seattle, WA

Pic Courtesy: "D'Arcy Norman, courtesy Flickr."
Environmental battles over the siting and expansion of airports are as old as the air travel industry itself, but only in recent years have the airlines themselves been under pressure to go green.

And there’s no time like the present for the industry to take some action: Air pollution from commercial jets is a growing concern among scientists, as is air travel’s role in climate change because of the more acute warming effect of emissions when they are disbursed so much closer to the upper atmosphere.

According to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, an independent group of scientists that advises the British government, emissions from aircraft will likely be one of the major contributors to global warming by the year 2050. According to USA Today, on a flight from New York to Denver, a commercial jet generates between “840 to 1,660 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger. That’s about what an SUV generates in a month.”

Despite still gloomy times for the industry post-9/11, a few are actually responding to the call. Virgin is blazing new trails as part of a $3 billion investment in energy efficiency. The company is experimenting with biodiesel and ethanol—fuels derived from crops—and has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in ethanol-related businesses. But don’t expect to ride on a biofuel-powered jet anytime soon.

Airplane makers are getting in on the act, too. Boeing successfully flew the world’s first hydrogen-powered, fuel cell airplane in April 2008. A company spokesperson called the plane—a small one-seater—“full of promises for a greener future.” Boeing is working to develop a commercial version, but uncertainties about hydrogen production and distribution put this advancement well into the future, too.

So what can consumers do to fly greener today? Sharon Beaulaurier of GreenLight magazine suggests choosing airlines with newer, more fuel-efficient fleets such as JetBlue, Singapore Airlines or Virgin.

She adds that direct flights are better than those with stopovers, as frequent take-offs and landings use more fuel than when the planes are cruising. She also recommends avoiding airlines and airports with bad track records for delays, which leave planes idling and spewing greenhouse gases for hours unnecessarily.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) runs AvoidDelays.com, which helps fliers choose airlines and airports based on on-time departures. Airlines with poor records include American, Atlantic Southeast, ExpressJet, Mesa and United, according to NATCA, which also calls Chicago’s O’Hare, New York’s LaGuardia, Newark, Philadelphia and San Francisco the worst airports for catching on-time flights.

Meanwhile, the European Union wants to require airlines touching down in Europe to participate in continent-wide carbon reduction programs already in place. Backers hope it will cut Europe’s exponential growth in airline emissions in half by 2020. Some carriers oppose the plan and are fighting it in court.

CONTACTS: Virgin Group, www.virgin.com; Boeing, www.boeing.com; AvoidDelays.com, www.avoiddelays.com.

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve found environmentally friendly shoes for myself, but have had trouble finding similar shoes for my kids. Are they out there?  - Dawn Masterson, Augusta, GA

"Courtesy Isabooties and Patagonia."
Kids’ shoes are a quickly expanding market and companies with a green perspective are now jumping into the race with mini versions of everything from flip-flops to slippers to heeled dress shoes.  While green kids’ shoes from makers like Simple, which offers organic cotton EcoSneaks with car tire soles, might seem expensive at $40 or more, they are durable enough to get passed around from sibling to sibling. “It is an investment if you’re going to do quality,” says Craig Throne, general manager of footwear at Patagonia.

Patagonia has been making climbing gear and outdoors wear for over 30 years, and is committed to using sustainable materials—including recycled polyester and only organic cotton in their clothes. Using hemp and recycled rubber content, the company has created kids’ shoes that are rugged and sturdy enough for hiking or climbing, or for simply running around in the back yard.

Of course, packaging plays a big role and in Patagonia’s case that means 100 percent recycled content boxes with soy-based inks and fun graphics that encourage kids to reuse the boxes. “We’re getting kids to participate and be more aware of the outdoor world,” says Throne. 

Timberland has launched its own line of sustainable kids’ shoes, too. “Kids today are learning about the environment at a younger and younger age—in many cases, they’re even teaching their parents,” says Lisa DeMarkis, head of Timberland’s kid’s division. “It’s important to show kids that even small choices can have a positive impact.”

The company strives to use the most environmentally friendly materials when possible—like recycled soda bottles (PET) in linings or meshes, recycled laces and organic cotton canvas—while always making sure that the shoes meet performance goals: “At the end of the day, the shoe has to stand up to kids and their daily adventures,” DeMarkis says. Curious customers can read the “nutritional labels,” which include the amount of renewable energy used in production, right on Timberland’s 100 percent post consumer recycled shoeboxes.

Parents looking to avoid leather in their kids’ shoes, whether for ethical or environmental reasons, have to do a bit of hunting online. While many vegetarian and non-leather clothing sites have yet to add kids’ shoes, KidBean.com has, including the popular baby shoes called Isabooties, which are made with soft, synthetic Ultrasuede.

For parents of budding dancers, a vegan alternative ballet slipper can be had from the Cynthia King Dance Studio in Brooklyn, New York. The dance instructor and studio owner approached a local shoemaker when she couldn’t find an affordable outlet for vegan slippers, and now provides them to the world at large.

CONTACTS: Cynthia King Dance Studio, www.cynthiakingdance.com ; Isabooties, www.isabooties.com ; KidBean, www.kidbean.com ; Patagonia, www.patagonia.com ; Simple, www.simpleshoes.com ; Timberland, www.timberland.com .

Dear EarthTalk: What makes those so-called “new urbanism” housing developments popping up around the U.S. more environmentally friendly than regular old suburban neighborhoods?  - Rusty Spinoza, Galveston, TX

"amandab3, courtesy Flickr."
The husband-and-wife team of town planners Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are typically credited as the founders of new urbanism, a style of community design that embraces mixed use (commercial and residential) development in pedestrian-friendly and green space-rich neighborhoods—much like the old neighborhoods many baby-boomers remember before suburban sprawl made us all slaves to our cars.

Duany and Plater-Zyberk formulated their new urbanism principles while living in one of the Victorian neighborhoods of New Haven, Connecticut while they attended graduate school in architecture at Yale. Their neighborhood included corner shops, front porches and a variety of attractive and well-designed housing and commercial structures—planting the seed of an idea that has now swept the U.S. and beyond.

The prototypical new urbanist community is Florida’s Seaside, which Duany and Plater-Zyberk began designing in 1979 for the 80-acre coastal parcel’s developer, Robert S. Davis. Their plan took the best elements of a handful of graceful southern cities like Key West, Charleston and Savannah to create a community based on the tried-and-true concept of walkable, self-contained neighborhoods. Besides 300 homes, Seaside contains a school, a town hall, an open-air market, a tennis club, a tented amphitheater and a post office—everything anyone could ever need in a town, and all within a five minute walk.

According to the non-profit Smart Communities Network, Seaside works as a community because of its design: “Mandatory porches are set close enough to walkways to enable porch sitters and passersby to communicate without raising their voices…. The streets are all interconnected; creating a network that eliminates ‘collector’ routes and reduces congestion. Walkways crisscross the development to encourage walking and biking, while narrow streets serve to reduce traffic speed.” Building fronts are a uniform distance from the curb and all streets are tree-lined to further the community’s “sense of place.”

Other examples of new urbanist communities include: Stapleton on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado; Seabrook on the southern coast of Washington State; Melrose Arch in Johannesburg, South Africa; Alta de Lisboa near Lisbon, Portugal; and Jakriborg in southern Sweden. Meanwhile, the idea has caught on in New Orleans, where developers are styling new communities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina based in part on the principles of new urbanism.

According to the website NewUrbanism.org, being green is central to the concept of new urbanism, where houses tend to be compact and on small lots. And many developers are incorporating green building design and alternative energy generation into their plans for these communities. Furthermore, proponents say that building densely settled, walkable communities instead of road-intensive suburban developments cuts down on the need to drive, thus further reducing the carbon footprint. 

CONTACTS: Seaside, www.seasidefl.com; Smart Communities Network, www.smartcommunities.ncat.org; NewUrbanism.org, www.newurbanism.org.

The plastic waste spawned by the recent astronomical growth in the bottled water business is significant. Environmentalists especially decry it because the water from our taps is usually as good as if not better quality than what’s inside the bottle (and indeed sometimes bottled water is just tap water). Further, water bottles are not subject to the bottle bill laws that have kept billions of soda containers—made from the exact same petroleum-derived PET plastic packaging—out of our bursting landfills.

According to the Container Recycling Institute (CRI), a Washington, DC-based non-profit committed to increasing the recycling of beverage containers of all kinds, sales of non-alcohol non-carbonated drinks—bottled water as well as energy and sports drinks—will likely surpass soda sales in the U.S. by 2010. More than seven times as much non-carbonated bottled water is sold annually in the U.S. than just a decade ago.

The fact that more Americans are switching over from unhealthy soda to water is a positive health trend, but reliance on bottled rather than tap water means that the environment is taking a big hit. CRI’s analysis shows that Americans have never recycled as much PET as in recent years. However, the sheer increase in bottled water sales means that even more of the material is going un-recycled than ever before. CRI says that if bottled water were covered under just the 11 state bottle bills currently granting five- to 10-cent refunds on returned soda bottles, the PET wasting rate could drop threefold or more nationally.

Besides being less wasteful, cutting back on the need to manufacture more plastic bottles from non-recycled (virgin) materials would also have a noticeable impact on America’s carbon footprint. CRI estimates that some 18 million barrels of crude oil equivalent were consumed in 2005 to replace the two million tons of PET bottles that were wasted instead of recycled. Some other negative environmental impacts of making more and more PET from virgin petroleum sources include damage to wildlife and marine life, air and water pollution, and greater burdens on already stressed landfills and incinerators.

CRI and others are working to get policymakers at both state and federal levels to mandate increased recycling for water bottles. Oregon is the first state to update its bottle bill—the first in the nation when it was enacted back in 1971—to include a five-cent refund on PET water bottles beginning in January 2009.

And just this past November, Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey introduced a bill on Capitol Hill calling for the creation of a federal bottle bill mandating a five-cent refund on all beverage containers—including water bottles. Entitled The Bottle Recycling Climate Protection Act, the bill is now with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce for review, and may come up for a vote this year.

Environmentalists are not optimistic, however, that such a bill can pass, given how influential the beverage industry is in protecting its interests, which include keeping the base price of its products like bottled water as low as possible, regardless of the availability of an after-purchase refund.

CONTACTS: Container Recycling Institute, www.container-recycling.org; The Bottle Recycling Climate Protection Act, http://www.fedcenter.gov/Articles/index.cfm?id=8608&pge_id=1854.