Bear a plastic water bottle at your own demise; the wave of social view is forming on you. From top rating documentaries, to articles and political debate, the hot issue on the soapbox is the menace around bottled water and the waste of resources that the industry pumps out.

The producing, transporting and disposal of water in petrochemical plastic bottles demands big amounts of water and energy, and generates huge quantities of greenhouse gases and waste.

Director of the recent documentary ‘Tapped: get off the bottle’ Stephanie Soechtig claims “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 Tapped crew are pushing the documentary with an across-America roadshow, receiving money from donors to reduce their water bottle use and taking their empty plastic water bottle in exchange for a reusable stainless steel bottle. Download Tapped from Amazon or iTunes.

Another short film ‘The Story of Bottled Water’ was released on World Water Day in March. Created by Annie Leonard of the famous ‘The Story of Stuff’, this film shows the methodology that is behind conning Americans into purchasing over half a billion bottles of water every week, despite the option of a few cents cost for water from the tap. See this film on You Tube.

Through her book ‘Bottlemania’, writer Elizabeth Royte chronicles one of the most massive marketing coups of the twentieth century and gives a powerful environmental alarm bell. She investigates the red flags we must inevitably answer to. Who owns the water? What could happen when a bottled-water corporation stakes a claim on your town’s water supply? Is the water coming from the tap entirely safe? What really is the environmental price of production, transporting and disposal of a plastic water bottle?

Politicians from around the international community are realising that they need to start the campaign – especially when the meetings where they debate are major consumers of bottled water. How often do we observe a politician in a government function sipping from a water bottle. They can drink from a water glass in Parliament House.

Leslie Samuelrich of Corporate Accountability International, claimed “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 of Australia to prevent the retailing of bottled water. At least 60 towns in the US and some places in Canada and the United Kingdom have lately prohibited spending taxpayer holdings on bottled water.

It is certain that this problem will be brought to the table 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.