WGBH reporter Adam Reilly recently looked into the plastic bottle ban in Concord, Mass, finding the town split between environmental and business concerns.
For additional, environmental context, Morning Edition's Bob Seay talked to Heather Goldstone, author of WGBH's Living Lab.
Bob Seay: What impact can a single town have in banning these bottles?
Heather Goldstone: I think we have to be realistic – the biggest impact will probably be an educational or awareness impact.
It’s estimated Americans drink 32 million gallons of bottled water every day. The Environmental Working Group says that we could line the equator, all the way around the planet, once every 27 hours with the water bottles we use. So one town is not going to make an enormous dent in that water bottle usage – but, it did get us talking about it this morning, and it could spark a lot of other conversations about natural resources and how we deal with our waste.
Bob Seay: But what about the argument that bottled water doesn’t need to be banned because they can be recycled?
Heather Goldstone: There’s a scientist here at Woods Hole who, among other things, studies plastic. He once said to me something that really stuck in my brain: The logos that say ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, should be redesigned, because in reality, reduce needs to be at least twice as big as reuse and recycle. Recycle should be sort of a last resort, and somehow it’s become our first choice in how to handle waste issues instead of trying to actually reduce waste.
There’s also the fact that we say we can recycle these bottles, but in reality that just under 30 percent of plastic bottles get recycled, and that’s one of the highest amounts of recycling for any kind of plastic.
http://video.wgbh.org/video/2324058247/
