Think Green – What can we do to help?
So what can we do?
Here are some tips on what you can do in your home to help conserve, recycle, reduce and reuse. Every little bit helps, so even if you don’t turn into a Mean GREEN Recycling Machine, at least throw your office paper into the recycling bin, instead of the regular trash.
Recycling Plastic BottlesThe bottled water fad seems to have exploded. You can pay upwards of $3 for a half liter bottle, water with vitamins added, water with flavors added (isn’t that just soda?), water that gives part of their proceeds to charity, there’s hooks and gimmicks all over the place but net net, water is water. The majority of bottled water is sourced from a municipal supply and further treated to remove any impurities that may be found in the source water. You will find some bottled water that is sourced from a Mountain Spring (FDA regulations stipulate that bottlers must reveal the source of the product on the label, if the label doesn’t say where its from, and you assume it is from a Spring, it probably isn’t). But, the only difference is not the purity of the product, but the mineral content (nothing to get alarmed about, it’s just that different minerals affect the taste in different ways).
The bottled water fad seems to have exploded. You can pay upwards of $3 for a half liter bottle, water with vitamins added, water with flavors added (isn’t that just soda?), water that gives part of their proceeds to charity, there’s hooks and gimmicks all over the place but net net, water is water. The majority of bottled water is sourced from a municipal supply and further treated to remove any impurities that may be found in the source water. You will find some bottled water that is sourced from a Mountain Spring (FDA regulations stipulate that bottlers must reveal the source of the product on the label, if the label doesn’t say where its from, and you assume it is from a Spring, it probably isn’t). But, the only difference is not the purity of the product, but the mineral content (nothing to get alarmed about, it’s just that different minerals affect the taste in different ways).
On average, Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. This number has escalated since the increase in sales of single serve bottled water. Sadly, the majority of these bottles do end up in landfills. Plastic bottles can be recycled but because they are made from petroleum, take between 50 and 100 years to decompose if added to a landfill. More than 45,000 tons of plastic trash is dumped into the world’s waterways every year, killing up to 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals annually.
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