You hear a lot about how horrible bottled water is and I\u2019ve been wondering lately, \u201cAre there any good things about bottled water?\u201d\u00a0 Well, it turns out that the lowly water bottle might just be the little hero that saved the day.\u00a0 You know the type, the one who everyone dislikes until they step forward and perform a heroic feat.\u00a0\u00a0 And a heroic feat they indeed performed.<\/p>\n
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I, like everyone else in the world, was glued to the television watching the unfolding disaster in Haiti on CNN.\u00a0 I was wondering how any of those unfortunate people were going to survive?\u00a0 Anyone following Anderson Cooper\u2019s journey\u2019s could see they were in big trouble and were going to need the basics of food, water and shelter just to make it through for the next few days.\u00a0 Thankfully, the airport opened quickly and aid started pouring in.\u00a0 One of the things that I noticed accompanying almost every emergency team were pallets of bottled water.\u00a0 One of the first to arrive on the scene of the disaster was a Search and Rescue Team from Iceland and they brought with them bottled water donated by Icelandic Glacial.\u00a0 Yep\u2026it was bottled water that was coming to the rescue– not free tap water, not an aluminum or heavy plastic refillable bottle.\u00a0 Yes, it was the much maligned, standard plastic, one time use, water bottle that came to the rescue of millions of Haitians.<\/p>\n
Without bottled water what would have become of thousands of Haitian children, and the elderly, the most vulnerable of those affected during the quake?\u00a0 What would have happened if the \u201cBan the Water Bottle Movement\u201d had been successful in eliminating bottled water all together?\u00a0 Studies are showing that when convenient bottled water isn\u2019t available consumers are replacing it with other convenience drinks\u2014mostly unhealthy soft drinks.\u00a0 Thankfully, bottled water was available for this crisis.<\/p>\n
I believe we need the bottled water industry.\u00a0 For me bottled water is an important part of our national security, providing us the ability to quickly deploy search and rescue, emergency medical and military to disaster situations like the ones we\u2019ve had in the past and like the one that Haiti is experiencing.<\/p>\n
Having said all of this, Haiti will find itself awash in a sea of plastic bottle pollution.\u00a0 Hopefully recycling organizations are looking ahead and developing contingency plans to handle sudden surges of plastic pollution.\u00a0 Organizations such as the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers (APR) or National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR), who have the expertise to develop plastic recovery programs,\u00a0 will be able to dust off the plans they have developed and put them into action once a disaster strikes.\u00a0 Recycling is important before, during and after these types of emergencies.<\/p>\n
We all know how important recycling is, don\u2019t we?<\/p>\n
Currently here in the U.S., recycling is only able to recover 20-30 percent of plastic bottle waste which is sold and shipped to companies that make items out of the plastic bottles such as carpet, clothing, grocery tote bags, post consumer plastic bottles and many other items.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the other 70-80 percent will go to the landfill.\u00a0 Standard PET plastic, the kind of plastic used to manufacture bottles for soft drinks, teas, water, etc., is an extremely durable plastic.\u00a0 PET is almost the perfect container for beverages; it is light weight, doesn\u2019t leach harmful chemicals, has an excellent shelf life and is able to withstand the pressures of carbonated drinks.\u00a0 But the major problem with PET is that it is so durable it doesn\u2019t want to decompose so PET that finds its way into a landfill will languish there for hundreds or thousands of years.<\/p>\n
There is a better answer–biodegradable plastic bottles.\u00a0 ENSO Bottles, has developed a biodegradable plastic bottle that can be recycled and if it gets into a landfill environment will biodegrade leaving behind biogases.\u00a0\u00a0 These are then captured and can be used to produce clean energy.\u00a0 Biodegradable bottles aren\u2019t the final answer to solving plastic pollution but they are a positive step in developing new products to improve our environment.<\/p>\n
Research continues to develop new products that will reduce the use of fossil fuels and develop plastics that are more sustainable for our environment.\u00a0 ENSO supports recycling and is working hand-in-hand with recycling organizations.\u00a0 The goal is to increase consumer recycling rates for plastic.\u00a0 However, as long as 70-80 percent goes to a landfill, the only answer is the ENSO biodegradable plastic bottle.<\/p>\n
Pray we won\u2019t have another disaster; however, should another hurricane or earthquake wreck havoc, look for the lowly water bottle coming to the rescue again, hopefully in an environmentally friendly biodegradable plastic bottle.<\/p>\n
By Max<\/p>\n
www.ensobottles.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You hear a lot about how horrible bottled water is and I\u2019ve been wondering lately, \u201cAre there any good things about bottled water?\u201d\u00a0 Well, it turns out that the lowly water bottle might just be the little hero that saved the day.\u00a0 You know the type, the one who everyone dislikes until they step forward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[886],"class_list":["post-1491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-blogs","tag-haiti-relief"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}