A petition to help give consumers more environmentally-friendly choices

Around 18 months ago we quit our jobs, sold our house and took our children out of school for a year (or two) of EdVenture – making learning rich, purposeful and real. Part of our road-school curriculum is centred on the UN’s Global Goals for Sustainable Development, and a petition we started in Change.org comes from our efforts, as a family, to make a positive impact on the planet.

Every day, the Earth’s valuable and depleting virgin non-renewable resources are used in the manufacture of single-plastic bottles that are filled with water for sale in our supermarkets.

The recycling red herring

The fact is, most single-use plastic bottles are only used for about 10 minutes before they are discarded, mainly into landfill sites where they will remain for hundreds of years, slowly degrading into microplastics and damaging ecosystems and wildlife -as well as human health. 

Bottled water companies mislead us into thinking that the bottles they use are environmentally friendly, when in fact they are not. The ‘Fully recyclable’ logo is a red herring, because most bottles don’t even make it to a plastic recycling centre (it’s too expensive to clean and recycle PET plastic for reuse). Those that do make it to a recycling centre, don’t actually get recycled into new bottles, but ‘down cycled’ into lower grade plastic products like fleeces and carpets.

The bottled water companies also like us to think that the bottles they make are made from recycled plastic, when they are not. Even the big players like Britvic and Nestlé use zero post-consumer recycled PET plastic in their bottles. Every new bottle they make is made from new resources.

Non-plastic bottled water alternatives

And what is worse, as consumers wanting to purchase packaged water from shops and supermarkets (not that there is any need to in the UK due to there being a safe supply of tap water), we are not even given the option to make environmentally responsible choices. Non of the main supermarket chains currently stock non-plastic bottled water alternatives, of which there are a growing number of reputable sources available: Vivid Water in a Box, AquaPax, Ugly Drinks and CanO Water (to name a few). Their shelves are full of row upon row of single-use plastic bottles.

If the supermarkets give us more choices to buy non-plastic bottled water alternatives (such as cartons, boxes or cans) then we will see a win-win situation — we will benefit as consumers, and the Earth will benefit from a reduction in the use and abuse of single-use plastic bottles.

Thanks for reading, thanks for caring.

PLEASE sign our petition and share the link https://www.change.org/p/uk-supermarkets-let-s-see-non-plastic-bottled-water-alternatives-on-the-supermarket-shelves

Find out more about our Clear Plastic Bottles campaign