Where I live I can't recycle (no curb side pickup, not even a central location where I can bring my recyclables). My small town had tried a recycling program, but unfortunately we were having to pay for it (it couldn't pay for itself). For where I live, in the semi-rural mountain west, add the cost of transporting recyclables long distances with the high cost of gas, and it's not happening here anytime soon.

I try to do what I can. I compost my vegetable/fruit scraps in the garden, I use shredded paper in the compost as well. I try to buy things only in containers I can recycle. The rest I transport 150 miles away when I just happen to be going to this other city to visit family anyway (two types of plastic, corrugated cardboard and aluminum-- they don't do glass).

Seattle's doing the right thing. Remember this is only the city, private citizens can still go out and buy bottled water if they want to. It saves tax payers money, and if there's no real difference between bottled water and city municipal water, it's a waste. It's not just a landfill issue, even you you recylce, there's cost of transporting the product (more than ever with the high fuel costs) plus the manufacture of the plastic bottles themselves, and the cost of transporting the recyclable product as well.

Recycling is a great help to the environment, one that any right-minded person would support. However, it isn't the "answer". The manufacture and distribution of unnecessary plastic bottles causes environmental damage whether that plastic is eventually recycled (which, surprise, requires fuel and also has an effect on the air around us) or ends up in a landfill. If you must use a plastic bottle, by all means recycle. But if you mustn't, we're all better off without buying it in the first place.

Somehow you still believe this in light of Erin Brokavich and panoply of prescription meds in the drinking water? Talk about the "biggest" scam. You're the biggest sucker.

Agree. They did not ban the sale of bottled water. The city stopped buying it. Outrageous. Biiiiig difference.

I knew immediately this would be another misleading title because I figured Seattle didn't really ban all bottled water. That's what Huff po does now to hook people in, I guess they figure the real news isn't good enough. Tabloid journalism.

HAHAHAHA So true. The first time I saw "bottle water" for sale I laughed and thought only a moonbat Liberal would be dumb enough to buy what is free.....but then I know Liberals and their desperate desire to "hip".

The next moonbat Liberal product will be "Canned Carbon-free Air" they can buy with "designer" coverings. It will be a hoot watching them make fools out of themselves AGAIN.

I do agree with most of your comments. I never drink bottled water. I drink tap water. This country has so much wealth when we spend billions of dollars on bottled water when tap water is essentially free.

Even poor people like the Katrina homeless get bottled water. If I was in charge of the food stamp program, I would ban bottled water being purchased with food stamps. Yesterday I was in Walmart with my wife who drinks nothing but bottled water and they were giving a free gallon of filtered water. My wife took it (sometimes I wonder if she was take a free dog turd). I was next and he asked me and I said no. He looked at me like I was crazy that I didn't want a free gallon. My wife probably gives the dogs bottled water like the dogs know any difference.

It isn't just America. The first bottled water I ever drank was in Europe. Same with thd fashion clothes and designer food. People will buy what they want. Check out Spitzer shelling out $4300 for a piece of tail?

By a water filter for your faucet or by a PUR or Britta Pitcher and filter your own water. I stopped buying bottled water a long time ago, first because of the pollution caused and second because most of the water being sold is questionable as to its purity.

Fill up a large bottle at home and bring with you. I see these guys carrying big Igloo coolers. They can keep their water in these.

Well, you folks might consider buying thermos jugs. Since when don't work sites have drinking water available? They did when I worked in construction. Privatization of public resources has to stop. I have been sickened for 2 decades watching people walk around with their silly little plastic water bottles filled with expensive store-bought water ... while perfectly good city water was readily available to them. Most of them had no clue that their fancy water probably came from the public system somewhere, anyway.

What is the problem with bottled water? A few facts from the files of a science teacher.

Is the water in a bottle really healthier to drink?

40% of bottled water comes from city taps. Bottled water is held to less strict standards than tapwater. (Seattle Times 3/20/05) Tap water from public water systems is regulated by the US Environmental Protection Agency which requires public systems to test often for 96 contaminants and publish the results. A four-year study of samples of bottled water found that one out of 5 bottles had chemicals that cause nerve damage and cancer and one out of 3 had arsenic or E.Coli contamination. Plastic toxicity is also a concern.
Bottled water is regulated by the Food & Drug Administration which requires only some of the same tests and not so often. (New York Times 8/18/2007)

Where do we get the idea that bottled water is better for us?
Fortune Magazine called water the "best investment sector for the century." (Seattle Times 3/20/05)
Coca Cola Co. has a 36% share of the $106 billion-a-year U.S. nonalcoholic ready-to-drink beverage business. (See Wall St Journal 8/30/07)

Is bottled water a responsible choice?
Water is increasingly scarce. In the US, disputes about water supplies pit farmers against fishermen, developers against endangered species, farmers against suburbs.
Bottled water is not efficient. It takes much more water to make bottled water than it delivers. To manufacture each kilogram of PET plastic (polyethelyne terephthalate) about 17 kilograms of water are required.
Worldwide, 1.1 billion people worldwide do not have access to safe drinking water. (WSt J 6/6/07) Twice that many do not have basic sanitation. 1.8 million people, mostly young children, die each year from diseases related to unclean water. Estimates of water supplies worldwide project that by 2025 demand for water will exceed supply by 56% (New Yorker 4/8/2002)
Bottled water also contributes to diminishing water supplies by adding to global warming which increases droughts because it electricity from coal, or natural gas and gasoline are used to manufacture, transport and sell the bottles. Every gallon of gasoline that is burned puts more than a gallon of carbon dioxide into the air; and coal is even worse.

Does recycling the empties make it better?
Sure, it"s more responsible to try to keep the plastic out of landfills and use it to make shoe soles or whatever. However, recycling does not actually save energy required to make new bottles as less than 5% of current bottles are made from recycled materials. Nationally now, 23% of PET bottles are recycled, a figure that is helped by the fact that 6 states, including California, have deposit laws. (Wall St Journal 8/30/2007)

Anything else??
Yes. In the US, access to clean water is something we take for granted. Do we really want to see that changed? It takes money to keep our underground water systems in great shape. If too many people start using bottled water, perhaps the political support for that process will diminish. We do not need two water streams in our country, one for rich and another for the rest of us. The bottling industry advertises and makes their drinks seem cleaner than tap water, even though the opposite is true. If we buy into that, and neglect our public system, we are giving up a human right and subjecting ourselves to corporate whims. NYTimes 8/18/2007)
Seem far fetched?
Ask the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Lima, and Rio de Janeiro, and in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, South Africa, Poland and Hungary where corporations have tried to buy up water supplies and charge people for the water that had always been free. In some of those places public protest stopped the privatization process, in other areas, the fight is being waged. Ask the family of Victor Hugo Daza, a seventeen-year student in Cochabamba killed by the army during protests over a Bechtel subsidiary that paid a local government for water rights and then started charging for water that had always been free. (New Yorker 4/8/2002)
When water supplies are turned over to private corporations, the public loses its democratic right to control a public resource. The public loses access to information about water quality and supply. The public is left, as it were, high and dry.
Access to clean water is a human right, not a commodity to be bought and sold for profit.

Corporate Accountability International is working on this issue. You can find them at: http://www.stopcorporateabusenow.org/campaign/think_outside_the_bottle_

The headline writers here on the HuffPost seem to be intentionally creating misleading -- and therefore inflammatory -- headlines. Like a cheap tabloid. It's very disappointing, and makes me want to go elsewhere for my daily fix.

because they work outdoors maybe, you cubicled-in knucklehead

Your suggestion is "way and by-far" toooooooooooooooooooooooo logical, and simplistic for the great American public to understand. You'd never make a successful politician. . . (think how lucky you are. . . LOL).


Kinda like, . . ."if you are against ABORTIONS, don't have one".

Hope not to offend you.