Gosh, is it tuesday already? Doesn't time fly when you are saving the planet*
*if saving the planets means spending the weekend in the sunshine supping far too many bottles of red wine!
Well, come on then, how are you all doing? Are any of these changes sticking yet? I'm genuinely enjoying the veggie bit and although I have had to use a couple of plastic bags, for the most part it is now second nature to take a bag out with me whenever I go shopping. Although if they have good cheap meats I always buy far too much. Sarah tries to ban me, but I can't resist a bargain. Our freezer is now full of half price kangeroos and various bits of animal all put aside for the summer barbeque that somehow never happened (all that rain... climate change? Or just Belgium???)
This week we are upping the steaks a bit! Steaks? oops, I meant stakes. This meat deprivation comes out in many forms...
Ok, so what are we going to do, well it is a simple challenge, STOP BUYING BOTTLED WATER!!! There are these shiny things in the kitchen called taps where you can get all the water you need. Of course at a later date we'll need to have a look at how we save that, but for now, here are some facts about the bottled water industry you may find surprising:
Americans consume about 29 billion water bottles a year. In order to make all these bottles, manufacturers use 17 million barrels of crude oil. That’s enough oil to keep a million cars going for twelve months.
Worldwide, 2.7 million tonnes of plastic is used every year by the bottled water industry. And not many bottles are recycled - perhaps 20% in USA, 10% in UK. The rest go to landfills or incineration ... or are just thrown away in the countryside or in the ocean.
Around a quarter of the 90 billion litres of bottled water drunk each year is consumed outside the country of origin. It is flown and shipped around the world, from France, Italy and Norway at best, from Japan and Fiji at worst, creating millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases.
Pretty amazing eh!
So good luck with the challenge. Keep me posted on how you are getting on...
All the best!
Ok: I will give one of Sarah's ecofriendly washing machine balls to the first person to recognise the song title of this post... I want the artist and the album it is on. No googling!
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6 comments:
I actually bought 2 x bottles of fizzy water from IKEA yesterday...I'm really going to miss fizzy water, but have sourced some glass bottles, which I guess must be better than plastic. I've also found myself in possession of a plastic bag today, even though I was buying environmentally friendly washing powder and looking for one of those balls that you can put in a washing mashine instead of washing powder. It lasts 3 years, so its great. Does anyone know where you can buy them in Brussels?
that would be Elliot Slith XO
*cough*google*cough*
he he :-)
These are very cool challenges Toby!! Only tap water for me.
(Lucy - this really is Lucy this time) I have a water filter on my desk at work to avoid those pesky bottles..
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