Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rethink

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A refillable glass bottle requires only about 10 percent as much energy per use as a recycled aluminum can. Cleaning, sterilizing and re-labeling a used bottle requires little energy compared with recycling cans made from aluminum, which has a melting point of 660 degrees Celsius (1,220 degrees Fahrenheit). Banning nonrefillables is a quintuple-win option — cutting material use, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, water pollution and garbage flow to landfills. There are also substantial fuel savings with these recycled products, because the refillable containers can be back-hauled to the original bottling plants or breweries for refilling.

Eliminate Wasteful, Non-essential Industries

Another increasingly attractive option for cutting CO2 emissions is to discourage energy-intensive but nonessential industries. The gold and bottled water industries are prime examples. The annual global production of 2,500 tons of gold requires the processing of 500 million tons of ore. That’s more than one-third the amount of virgin ore used to produce steel each year. One ton of steel requires the processing of 2 tons of ore. In stark contrast, for 1 ton of gold, the figure is 200,000 tons of ore.

From a climate point of view, it is difficult to justify bottling water (often tap water to begin with), hauling it long distances and selling it for outlandish prices. Clever marketing, designed to undermine public confidence in the safety and quality of municipal water supplies, has convinced many consumers that bottled water is safer and healthier than what they can get from their faucets. However, in the United States and Europe, there are tougher standards regulating the quality of tap water than that of bottled water.

Manufacturing the nearly 28 billion plastic bottles used to package water in the United States alone requires 17 million barrels of oil. Include the energy needed for hauling 1 billion bottles of water every two weeks from bottling plants to supermarkets or convenience stores, plus the energy needed for refrigeration, and the barrels of oil used per year by the U.S. bottled water industry number roughly 50 million.

Raising energy efficiency to off-set projected growth in energy demand is essential to cutting net CO2 emissions 80 percent by 2020, thus halting the rise in atmospheric CO2 and helping keep future temperature rise to a minimum. Reducing materials use through the measures outlined here will help us attain this goal, moving the world closer to temperature stability.

Excerpted from Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.

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