Carry a plastic water bottle to your own peril; the pressure of public perspective is forming away from you. From big rating documentaries, to books and campaigns, the hottest issue in town is the terror of bottled water and the waste that the industry generates.

The processing, transportation and waste of water in petrochemical plastic bottles eats up tremendous waste of water along with energy, and produces large quantities of greenhouse gases and waste.

Director of the upcoming documentary ‘Tapped: get off the bottle’ Stephanie Soechtig says “1500 water bottles end up in landfill every second – that’s 30 million water bottles a day! We wanted to show people just how much waste is generated by bottled water.” The people behind Tapped are plugging the movie with an across-America roadshow, asking pledges from citizens to lower their water bottle numbers and taking their empty plastic water bottle for a reusable stainless steel bottle. Download Tapped from Amazon or iTunes.

A similar film ‘The Story of Bottled Water’ was released on World Water Day in March. From the pen of Annie Leonard of the well-received ‘The Story of Stuff’, this short animated film explores the methodology that is behind conning Americans into purchasing around half a billion bottles of water a week, as opposed to a few cents cost for tapwater. Check out her animation on You Tube.

Through her book ‘Bottlemania’, author Elizabeth Royte explores one of the greatest marketing tricks of the twentieth century and provides a strong environmental alarm. She asks the situations we must inevitably deal with. Who has ownership of our water supply? What could happen when a bottled-water business holds your town’s water supply? Is the water coming out of a tap completely safe? What really is the environmental price of production, transporting and disposing of a plastic water bottle?

Politicians from around the nation are beginning to realise that they need to take action – especially when the places at which they serve are major consumers of bottled water. How often do we see a politician at a government function sipping from a water bottle. Why can’t they might be able to use a water glass in Parliament House.

Leslie Samuelrich of Corporate Accountability International, said “Cities and states are spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on bottled water, and that’s not to mention what’s spent to deal with all the plastic bottles that are thrown out.”

In July 2009, the NSW rural town of Bundanoon became the first society around Australia to stop the retailing of bottled water. About 60 townships in the American states and some places in Canada and the UK have lately banned spending taxpayer money on bottled water.

It is certain that these issues will be on the agenda come World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the environment’s most current water-related problems.

Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores.