Cutting Beverage Container Waste,
A to Z:

Curbside Improvement

During the 1990s, curbside recycling in the United States mushroomed from about 2,000 programs serving only 15% of the population to 10,000 programs serving about half of the American population. Whether blue boxes, bags, or buckets are used, curbside recycling is convenient for the consumer, and has been instrumental in recovering large quantities of food containers, newspapers and junk mail, and beverage containers consumed at home.

Unfortunately, the recycling excitement of the 1990s has waned in recent years. The growth of new recycling programs plateaued around 2002, so large chunks of the U.S. population living in dense urban areas, sparsely settled rural areas, or apartment buildings, do not have curbside recycling at all. Within many existing curbside recycling programs, people’s participation has also tapered off, and local government does not have the money to beef up program promotion and enforcement.

Clearly, curbside recycling across the country needs a shot in the arm, or it risks becoming a financial liability for hundreds, if not thousands, of cities and towns.

Non-profit links:

• Eureka Recycling’s Curbside Collection Study (St. Paul, MN 2002)
• Cutting the Waste Stream in Half: Community Record-Setters Show How” (PDF, Institute for Local Self-Reliance)
• “Curbside Recycling, the Next Generation” (MS Word, California Integrated Waste Management Board/SWANA)
• StopWaste.org: (Alameda County Source Reduction & Recycling Board, Alameda County, CA)
• Curbside recycling as part of community zero waste agenda (EcoCycle, Boulder, CO)

Industry Links:

• Glass Recycling Best Practices (Glass Packaging Institute)
• Earth’s 911 “Best Practices in Curbside Collection”
• Curbside Value Partnership (an beverage and packaging industry-funded initiative)
• “Best Practices and Industry Standards in PET Plastic Recycling” (PDF, NAPCOR)

Cutting Beverage Container Waste, A to Z:

Bottled Water Alternatives

Bottled water consumption has grown more sharply than any other beverage type. Between 1976 and 1996, U.S. bottled water consumption increased 10-fold: from 337 million gallons to 3.2 billion gallons. By 2002 it surpassed 5 billion gallons. In terms of individual bottles sold, water consumption grew from about 3 billion units in 1997 to about 23 billion in 2004, and probably more than 25 billion in 2005.

Bottled water consumption continues to grow, as the public’s appetite for it appears to be insatiable. Many organizations and news sources have profiled the growth of bottled water, and are concerned about it not only for environmental reasons (since fewer than 15% of PET plastic water bottles are currently recycled), but because society’s acceptance of drinking bottled water threatens to undermine the importance of maintaining safe public drinking water supplies and threatens the sustainability of safe water supplies.

Offices and institutions can promote the use of water coolers and water fountains. At the individual level, people can install filters on their kitchen faucets, or use tabletop filtered pitchers, to improve the taste of their local tap water. Best yet, citizens can become involved in efforts to monitor and improve the quality of their municipal water supply. If this is impossible in the short-term, 3-gallon jugs of water from the supermarket, or 5-gallon coolers by subscription, are at least a better alternative than single-serving plastic water bottles. Some supermarkets and freestanding water stations provide consumers with an opportunity to refill their containers.

Some links:

• “Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?” report by the Natural Resources Defense Council
• “Message in a Bottle,” cover story in E magazine
• “Bottled Water: Better Than the Tap?” US Food and Drug Administration
• “Is Bottled Water Better Than Tap?” story by ABC News
• Inside the Bottle: A campaign on the bottled water industry
• Corporate Water Privatization website of the Sierra Club
• Bottled Water CRI's comprehensive bottled water resource
• Bottled Water: Pouring Resources down the Drain from Earth Policy News

Some products

• Mirage Water Maker: Makes drinking water from water in the air
• Sigg aluminum bottles: Why use flimsy plastic bottles when you can use durable aluminum? *product submitted by Constanza Zordan
• www.watermillexpress.com: Customers vend 1, 3 or 5 gallons of water into their own clean bottles
• Xziex: Machines that create clean drinking water by condensing and purifying atmospheric humidity

Achieving Zero Beverage Container Waste, A to Z:

Alternatives to packaged beverages

Daily consumption of packaged beverages has become the norm for the average American.

From 1960-1970, the average person bought 200-250 packaged drinks each year, and many of those were in refillable bottles. Before the late 1960’s, fountain drinks, draft beer, and water fountains complemented people’s at-home consumption. As refillables were phased out, as technology developed to enable single-serving plastic bottles, and as industry marketing efforts were ramped up, packaged beverage consumption grew and grew.

By 1990 it reached 546 bottles and cans per capita, and by 2000 it surpassed 600 (view a graph). CRI now estimates that the average person in the United States will consume 686 beverage bottles and cans in 2006. Note that this is an average for every person in the country. Because many segments of the population cannot possibly consume this much—including infants and toddlers, the sick or elderly, or the incarcerated, for example—it follows that most children and adults are actually consuming far more than the national average: or more than two packaged beverages every single day.

Is it time to question our consumption of packaged soft drinks, juices, sports drinks, and teas? What would happen if we filled our children’s thermoses with juice from a large jug, like our mothers did 30 years ago? If we made conscious decisions to buy family-size rather than single-serving size bottles of soda and juice? If we chose to drink from the water cooler at work instead of from a new plastic bottle? These choices would surely save money for the average American, and they would also reduce energy and resource consumption. There are also health benefits of reducing our consumption of sugary sodas, as well as diet drinks.

Some Links:

• Home Soda Systems
  • Soda Barsystem.com: An online vendor of equipment for setting up a home soda fountain
  • Soda-Club: Sells equipment and ingredients for making soda and seltzer at home
  • Soda Tech, Inc: Sells and installs soda systems for homes and businesses
• Incentives for re-using containers.  Many schools and businesses offer financial incentives to those who bring their own beverage container rather than using a disposable one.  Here are a few:
  • Starbucks' Bean to Cup program Offers a 10¢ discount to customers who use their own mugs
  • University of Vermont's reusable mug program
  • The University of Buffalo
  • Concordia University's Lug-A-Mug Campaign
  • University of Guelph's Sustainability Initiatives
  • Gotimplora The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has designed a reusable bottle/cup combo to reduce waste on its campus (Language: Català)
• Watermill Express: Customers vend 1, 3 or 5 gallons of water into their own clean bottles