June 2010 Archives

There is no shortage of green marketing with body care products. When shopping for them, you will find hundreds of brands that will tell you they have the product with the most natural, organic and environmentally sound ingredients.

But one German company is taking the green messaging a step further. Their brand doesn't boast about how they are saving the planet, but rather the branding itself tells you what you should be doing to save the planet.

'Stop The Water While Using Me' shampoo, shower gel and toothpaste aims to remind you to conserve water every time you are in the shower or brushing your teeth.

This is kind of like having a PSA billboard in the washroom with you. I must admit it would make me think twice about a long shower or leaving the water running while I lather up. As we have mentioned before, the little things add up to save a lot of water.

Bottom line: 'Stop The Water While Using Me' spreads a good message and is just brilliant marketing. By the way, the products themselves are actually eco-friendly, made with biodegradable containers and organic ingredients.

The shampoo, shower gel, and toothpaste are available for 13, 12 and 8 Euros respectively. 

The America Water Works Association (AWWA) has an annual conference to bring together water utility professionals from all over the country.

I imagine the conference, held in Chicago this year, is incredibly wonky and the average person might not be able to appreciate it without falling asleep.

However, they have a pretty serious tap water tasting competition every year, where many cities from all over the country participate to find "the best of the best". The surprise winner this year? Stevens Point, Wisconsin. That is impressive. A small town beating out the biggest, most sophisticated water systems in the country.

But what is more impressive? New York City, the biggest mega-metropolis in the country was number two!! TapIt's beloved home city beat out the best, including Boston, San Francisco and many other cities with amazing water systems.

New York is doing something right with it's water, that's for sure.

Photo credit: Jenny Downing on Flickr

A new study on Southern Ocean Sperm Whales has found that these sea mammals are doing us a huge favor by reducing carbon in the atmosphere.

While these sperm whales travel the southern seas, they deficate. Their waste, which is very high in iron, greatly increases the growth of phytoplankton in the water. Phytoplankton are very good at capturing carbon from the atmosphere and trapping it.

The 12,000 sperm whales in the Southern Ocean are responsible for taking 200,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year. That is the equivalent to the carbon output of 40,000 cars.

We need to save these whales to save the planet. But unfortunately, it is a catch 22, where climate change is already altering their eco-system, putting their habitat in peril.

MOM's Organic Market's, a organic and natural foods retailer in the Washington DC area has discontinued the sale of bottled water from it's 6 regional retail locations.

In a move that may be the first of it's kind for a retailer this large, the management clearly understands the problems of bottled water.

"There are now 5 swirling masses of plastic in our oceans, each roughly the size of Texas.  Plastic never goes away and the problem will only get worse- and the sooner we take action, the better! Not only does plastic damage our environment, but it increases our dependence on oil." said Scott Nash, the Founder and CEO of the grocery chain in a press release.

As part of the store's battle the bottle initiative, they will be adding water filtration refill stations to all their locations so customers can refill their own reusable bottles.

They will also eliminate most plastic bags in their produce department by replacing plastic wraps with biodegradable clam shells for items such as potatoes, onions, oranges and salad mix. Pre-packaged bulk foods will be replaced with either bio-plastic containers or cellophane.

Basically MOM's is showing us that with a little initiative, food retail can be truly waste free. It all starts with that bottled water, and anything is possible.

Peter Gleick is an internationally recognized water expert, MacArthur Fellow, and the president of the Pacific Institute, an environmental think tank based in Oakland, CA.

He released a great new book last month about the bottled water problem called "Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind our Obsession With Bottled Water" (purchase a copy here).

I was happy to be able to get some of Peter's thoughts about our bottled water problem:



William Schwartz: What did you find was the most alarming statistic about bottled water when you were researching for your book 'Bottled and Sold'?

Peter Gleick: There are many remarkable numbers and statistics about bottled water. Pick you own favorite from the book.

Among them: There have been over 100 bottled water recalls in the United States, and perhaps many more. Very few of them receive any public notice, and most occur long after the bottled water has been shipped to market and sold.

Americans buy, drink, and throw away 1000 plastic bottles of water every second of every hour of every day.

It takes the equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil to produce the plastic bottles used for bottled water in the U.S. each year

WS: Where do you see the momentum right now with the bottled water vs. tap water debate? Have bottled water sales been slumping because of growing consumer awareness or the poor economy?

PG: I believe that both the economic slump and the growing revolt against bottled water have contributed to the first decline in bottled water consumption in three decades. The bottled water industry would like to place the drop in sales on the economy, and hope that it picks up as the economy recovers, but I believe growing public awareness of the problems with bottled water may have turned the tide.

WS: We have seen towns such as Concord, MA in the US and Bundanoon, Australia ban bottled water sales. Do you think this is an effective or realistic method to solve the bottled water problem nationally?

PG: I do not propose a ban on bottled water in the book. I do not think such an approach is appropriate -- bottled water is a commodity, like many others. But I do believe strongly that there are things that should be done to reduce the demand for bottled water. In particular, we must restore national and local confidence in tap water, put water fountains back in public places, and forbid misleading and false advertising about bottled water. If we did these things, bottled water would once again become a luxury, not a necessity, in people's eyes.

WS: In certain areas of the country, tap water has taken on a lot of controversy. Whether it is boil warnings or the revelation that there has been elevated lead levels in the water that went unreported, it is easy to be doubtful of its safety. What would be your message to the public to help them regain trust in the public system?

PG: A key message in my book is that we must work to restore confidence in our tap water system. We must expand and upgrade municipal water systems to remove new contaminants and to ensure that the taste of tap water is good. We should be proud of our tap water system and do whatever is necessary to ensure that it provides the highest quality water.

WS: What do you think the single most effective thing someone can do on an individual level to help solve this problem?

PG: As individuals,  buying bottled water is a choice. We can instead choose to carry refillable bottles and to use tap water whenever possible. In the end, the bottled water industry needs consumers, and if consumers goes elsewhere (i.e., back to the tap), sales will dry up and the environmental consequences of bottled water will be lessened.
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Make sure to check out Peters blog at the SF Chronicle. Also, don't forget to buy the book! You can find it at Island Press or at Amazon.com.

Out of the grim saga of the Gulf Oil Spill comes some hope that BP could possibly be held accountable in a significant way for polluting the Southern US's coastline.

Three environmental groups, the Gulf Restoration Network, Louisiana Environmental Action Network and Environment America are suing BP under the Clean Water Act, charging the company with allowing oil to leak into the gulf and failing to measure the true volume of the leak.

The Clean Water Act was, after all, partly inspired into law by a 1969 oil rig spill near Santa Barbara, CA. Additionally, the Exxon Valdez Spill in the Gulf of Alaska in 1989 helped inspire the Oil Pollution Act (OPA) that strengthened the Clean Water Act to open up criminal charges and civil action against companies responsible for oil spills.

The oil rig spill near Santa Barbara leaked 100,000 barrels of oil. The Exxon-Valdez tanker spill was responsible for 10 million gallons of spilled oil. BP Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico? 22 to 35 million gallons so far. If this does not spur catastrophic fines for BP and other companies involved and new stronger legislation, I don't know what will.

Because the BP clean up effort seems to have vastly underestimated the volume of oil leaking into the ocean and used banned practices such as releasing toxic chemicals into the water to break up the oil, legal experts believe the companies could be fined as much $4.7 Billion under the Clean Water Act.

Lets hope these environmental groups are successful against what I imagine is a massive BP legel effort. We just can't afford for something like this to happen again.

You can support these groups through the following links: Gulf Restoration Network, Louisiana Environmental Action Network and Environment America.

Photo thanks to jeferonix on flickr under Creative Commons license

Quirky.com is a social product development site where people submit product ideas and then others can contribute to the design on the products path to production. They have produced everything from a compact luggage scale, to a rainwater collector for plastic bottles.

Using its special crowd sourced design process, Quirky has recently finished up a new kind of reusable water bottle. It is called the HydraDuo which features two removable 8 oz. containers in one bottle. This way, if you can't decide what beverage to fill your bottle with or water is simply not enough, you have choices.

The top of the bottle is also designed to allow you to easily drink one liquid without it mixing with the other. That way you can have water and iced coffee or your favorite spirit and a chaser with no mixing.

Is this one of those ideas that seems useful in theory but no one really needs? The great thing about Quirky is that if a product does not reach its pre-order threshold, it is never produced. The HydraDuo, at the moment, has sold 116 of the required 980 to go into production.

If you think this is a great idea, pre-order here. They go for $17.50 each.

Plastic grocery bags have been in the news quite a bit lately. Following Washington DC's 5 cent bag tax earlier this year, California is moving closer to a statewide ban. In New York, Chicago and Tuscon, stores are now required to take back plastic bags for recycling.

Never-the-less, plastic bags still have an estimated 13% recycling rate and mostly escape to live second lives in landfills, forests, beaches and oceans.

Film director Ramin Bahrani brilliantly follows the immortal and existential journey of the plastic bag in his new film 'Plastic Bag' for the FutureStates short film series. The plastic bag is played by renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog.

Watch the film in full below: 

According to Circle of Blue WaterNews, S2C Global Systems, a San Antonio, Texas based company in partnership with Alaska Resource Management LLC, will be exporting 2.9 billion gallons (10.9 billion liters) of water a year, from Alaska to Mumbai, India.

The operation is the first of its kind in that the water will be treated like other globally traded commodities to be shipped on ocean tankers.

Alaska Resource Management has struck a deal with the town of Sitka, Alaska to bulk extract water from the local resevior at 1 cent a gallon.

The water is planned to be shipped and offloaded in a Mumbai port, where it will be bottled into 2.5 to 5 liter containers and shipped around the region.

While states like California and Arizona ship their tap water from hundreds of miles away to meet demand, the concept of shipping water to be bottled thousands of miles, across oceans is new.

The trend of using a global water trade to solve local water purity issues is disturbing. It is highly unsustainable for many reasons to rely on water supplies from half way around the globe instead of working on the cleanliness of the local supply.

Foreign energy supplies are bad enough,  no one should be in the position of being dependent on foreign water.

For a range of public opinion on this subject, see this article at CircleofBlue.org.

Dave Matthews Band is teaming up with Filter for Good to attempt to rid their 2010 Summer Tour of bottled water. This is a huge challenge, as large concerts tend to be notorious trash producers.

Venues along the tour will be equipped with 'Hydration Hubs' where concert goers can get free reusable water bottles and fill up with filtered water. Visitors to the Hubs will get a chance to take the FilterForGood pledge and learn about other things they can do to reduce their environmental impact.

Concert goers will have the chance to recycle, 'offset' their carbon footprint from traveling to the event and learn about local environmental groups.

The band itself will be driving in biodiesel fueled buses offsetting any other carbon emissions associated with putting on the concerts.

"In our 20 years of tour greening, this will likely be the greenest tour of its size in history," said Michael Martin, CEO of EFFECT Partners who has been organizing the tour's sustainability plan.

Dave Matthews himself describes what the tour is trying to accomplish with it's green efforts (see video below).

 


photo credit: stephenyeargin under Creative Commons license