Water Bottles Bad... Sodapop Bottles ok?

Its the bottled water companies who say that bottled water is so great, not environmentalists. We all now know that most bottled water is simply filtered municipal water. You're just as safe if you use a home filtration system, and it's cheaper! There is a push to get people to use reuseable bottles for their water, and it's a great idea. Banning the water bottles is dumb, requiring a deposit for them is better. While they are technically the same materials, the environmental difference between soda bottles and water bottles is that soda bottles usually have a deposit on them to ensure recycling them. Water bottles don't have a deposit and thus are usually thrown into landfills where they never degrade. They are a waste of our natural resources because of this. A better recycling system is the best answer for everyone. "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

I have NEVER in all my life heard an environmentalist arguing that bottled water is better than tap water, seeing as how it uses unnecessary packaging, contributes to pollution with the manufacturing and distribution process and is about 100x more expensive than tap water. Every green activist I have ever read insists that tap water is the way to go. But then I live in the UK where the general population is sufficiently well educated that they wouldn't be taken in by that level of stupidity, and you just wouldn't get away with talking that kind of nonsense.

It coud be made easier, by recycling water bottles, or when you empty a juice bottle, fill it with the water. Frankly it would be more expensive to set up water fountains everywhere. But I see buying bottled water as a bit costly especially if the water bottle is plastic. But surely they can be dumped in the recycle bin, can't they? They do have that little triangle on them that says recyclable/ I hope.

I reckon that enviro mental groups are just as fickle and inconsistent as our science groups. science officials that say things like put your infants in shoes, they need them for their feet to form properly and to be able to walk correctly later on. then they say let your infants be barefooted, the foot needs to grow into its own shape and will be stronger for it then they tell parents it is best to put your infant's feet in shoes. eh?

Well although they are both plastic, where I live they but a deposit on plastic bottles for coke and pepsi but not for water bottles. This way more people are encouraged to bring their bottles back to the store to get their deposit back. Companies buy this and reuse it for other things. Perhaps water bottles are made of a different plastic that can't be reused (is seems easier to bend). I really don't know why they don't use the same bottles (maybe so you don't refill them youselves) but there must be some reason to their madness.

I was under the impression that bottles, if made of plastic, are recycleable. Maybe people just aren't recycling them enough, and so while they might not actually be bad for the environment, due to large consumpitons of bottled water and too few numbers of people recycling them, they've become a problem in that area.

I thought the same thing too Para. And just to elaborate on the deposits for pop bottles, very few states do it. Michigan, Iowa and a couple others, and even then the 5 cents you get back is not much of a motivation to take them back. Personally I drink bottled water on occassion, but found it just as easy, and cheaper to buy a sports bottle and fill it up from the tap. Banning water bottles is a good idea in theory, but like you said, pop bottles are just as bad, along with a ton of other things that we could recycle but don't. The problem lies with the fact that not everyone recycles. In my house we recycle anything we can, but that is not the norm. We live in a society of convenience, and the people that rant about the environment ought to put some effort into making recycling a convenient thing.

So why don't they sell water in the same kind of bottles that they sell soda in. Things like this really make me worry about this country. I also heard that bottled water is no better for you than tap water.

It is the dioxins in the plastic recycled-or-not that is the problem, basicallty the difference between soda-pop bottles and water bottles. It is also the carbonation of soda that changes these chemicals used to manufacture the high-temprature resistable and then cooled down into a 2 or 1 liter bottle holding a liquid that can 'absorb' some of the harmful remnants. Having a deposit amount symbol on the outside is marketing not scientific differences !

Considering that I don't like soda, I can't really say if I feel that all the soda containers about are particularly awesome. I abhor water bottles though. A lot of communities collect recycling, but the materials are then incinerated, and not recycled, because a certain amount is needed before it is cost-effective to actually recycle. I still sort my stuff, though, out of principle and hope. So much waste goes into making water bottles, and with water becoming a fashionable drink, I bet they're pretty high up there on the list of things littered. Not to mention that it's made out of plastic, which is a yucky substance.