According to the Whole Foods Market website, Americans toss out about 100 billion plastic bags annually (we recycle a pitiful 0.6% of our plastic bags), crowding landfills with an energy-consuming product (it takes 430,000,000 gallons of crude oil to make the 100 billion bags) that lasts for at least 1,000 years. Whole Foods estimates that their action will save 100 million plastic bags in 2008, alone.

By drawing attention to their company policies that are good for the earth, Whole Foods also gets some good press. Was this part of their plan?

I could not get anyone at Whole Foods to answer this question, but I spoke to Jonathan Netzky, a green business owner, and the one of the founders of a sustainable business network, the Business Association for a Sustainable Evanston, or BASE, to which I belong. BASE is working on creating a cerification system for member businesses, a way of differentiating a business as being environmentally friendly.

Part of the certification involves pledging to ban the sale of plastic water bottles in an individual business. For the members of BASE, banning plastic water bottles not only helps the environment, it also promotes our business association and the indvidual businesses that make choices that have a positive impact on the environment.

“We are creating a certification,” Jonathan Netzky said. “Businesses can choose to participate and do something positive,” he added.

Green businesses should practice what they preach by engaging in commercial practices that do not harm the environment. “It’s irrelevant what they preach; what is important is what they do,” said Jonathan.

So if you give a discount to shoppers who walk or ride a bike to your store rather than drive, or bring in reusable containers to take home bulk food, keep up your business practice–and tell the world you are doing so, as long as it’s truly a green business practice. Jonathan Netzky points out that while Whole Foods had used branded plastic bags to market themselves in the past, they are now using the absence of plastic bags as a marketing tool.

“It’s a way of doing something postive for the world,” Jonathan said.

There is nothing wrong with green marketing, as long as it is truly green. Who knew that banning plastic bags could have so many uses?

It’s ironic. In many parts of the world, there is no clean drinking water. Here in the U.S., pure, drinkable water flows out of every tap, and yet Americans buy a staggering amount of bottled water. We pay big bucks for it, too - over $15 billion a year.

Worst of all, the bottles are overflowing our landfills, and contribute to global warming.

Take a look at this video from Doug James, and then check out these surprising facts.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/OZbTXDkrD1o" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

More than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water, including Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani. Despite this, bottled water consumption is growing at 10 percent a year, faster than any other beverage. We drink 15 times more bottled water today than we did in 1976.

This doesn’t mean we’re healthier, despite the ads. Federal regulations for municipal water are far more stringent. Bottled water rules allow higher levels of many contaminants, with more lenient requirements for filtration, testing and reporting. See NRDC’s bottled water report for details of contaminants by brand.

The Earth isn’t healthier for it, either. According to the Pacific Institute’s fact sheet [PDF], manufacturing the 30+ billion plastic water bottles we bought in 2006:

• Required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil — enough to fuel more than one million vehicles for a year. (Note: This was erroneously reported by The New York Times as 1.5 million, and the error is repeated in many places.)
• Produced more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
• Used three times the amount of water in the bottle.

And these numbers don’t include transporting the bottles. Nearly 25 percent of bottled water crosses national borders before reaching consumers. Adding in transportation, the energy used comes to over 50 million barrels of oil equivalent - enough to run 3 million cars for a year.

Case Study: Fiji Water

Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles of water a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water (see Fast Company article). Adding to the irony, Fiji itself uses almost no bottled water, according to a Pacific Institute report [PDF]. They export it.

Shipping Fiji Water around the world increases its environmental footprint. Manufacturing and shipping a one liter bottle produces over half a pound of greenhouse gas emissions, and uses nearly 7 times the amount of water in the bottle, according to calculations by Pablo Päster on TriplePundit.

The heavy use of water is as serious as the greenhouse gas emissions. Water is fast becoming a scarce resource.

We Could Recycle, But…

Recycling would help, but we don’t usually do it. Less than 20 percent of the 28 billion single-serving water bottles that Americans buy each year are recycled. Some estimates are as low as 12 percent.

According to a Container Recycling Institute report [PDF], the national recycling rate for all beverage containers is 33 percent. In states with deposit systems, the rate jumps to 65-95 percent. But of the eleven states with deposit laws, only three include containers for non-carbonated beverages (like water), though non-carbonated beverages now comprise 27 percent of the market.

Last November, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a national bottle bill to address global warming that includes water bottles and other non-carbonated beverage containers.

The beverage industry, which long resisted deposit laws, has started to cooperate — mainly because it sees bottled water as the answer to the soda sales slump. Following months of bad publicity, manufacturers like Coke, Pepsi, and Nestlé have begun making lighter-weight plastic bottles, and are encouraging consumers to recycle.

Better Yet, Carry Tap Water

If you buy bottled water, recycle the bottle. But the better solution — for you and the environment — is to drink tap water, both at home and at restaurants:

• Tap water is cleaner than most bottled water.
• Tap water is delivered to homes and offices for $0.002 a gallon. Bottled water, which can cost as much per gallon as gasoline, is a thousand times more expensive.

The quality of municipal water in the U.S. is generally excellent. Don’t let the recent reports about pharmaceuticals in tap water deter you — see this TreeHugger post for why.

But if you don’t trust tap water, or you have old plumbing, or you think tap water tastes funny, then try a water filter like those from PUR or Brita. To learn more about water filters, check out the rated list of water filter review sites at Consumer Search.

To carry water with you, use a reusable container filled with tap water. But don’t reuse single-use water bottles. This can expose you to bacterial build-up and carcinogens leached from the plastic.

Quite a few companies make reusable water bottles. There’s an ongoing debate about the safety of the polycarbonate plastic some use, but there are many safe reusable bottles made from other materials.

Use it or Lose it

National Geographic’s Green Guide notes, “…the federal share of funding for water systems has declined from 78 percent in 1973 to 3 percent today.” This places the financial burden almost entirely on local governments.

Food and Water Watch also talks about how important it is to stop this trend and maintain the quality of municipal water. Their Take Back the Tap [PDF] report gives a detailed overview of the issues surrounding tap water versus bottled water.

What do you think? Can you give up bottled water?

Daniel Burt is an eye doctor and his wife Amanda is a civil engineer living in Nashville. Their hobbies include living a lifestyle that makes a statement against rampant overconsumption and wastefulness in America. In other words, they dive in dumpsters to redeem things that have been thrown away.

Daniel explains, “We try to live very simply, and we don’t spend a lot on ourselves. We are very happy with having a little. We like to make it a priority to share a lot of our money. A lot of that comes from our Christian values of sharing and generosity.”

Amanda tells why donating their surplus discoveries to people in need is also helpful to the planet. “We just put it back into the system rather than into a landfill,” she says.

Their blog gives a more detailed account of the beliefs and values behind their “freegan” lifestyle. Daniel says that Americans represent 5% of the world’s population, but they use 30% of the world’s resources.

In part 2 of his 3-part series of blog posts explaining why two professionals would take part in such an unusual lifetyle, Daniel sums it up this way:

We recycle and dumpster dive because we care about God’s earth and its inhabitants, and we believe that consuming and wasting too much of the planet’s resources is destroying both. It’s time we started loving our neighbors by shredding our credit cards and treading lightly on the earth…somewhere other than a shopping mall.

The couple believes that freeganism goes beyond recovering usable “waste” from ending up in the landfill. It is a lifestyle that begs the question, “Why do we have so much waste in the first place?”

To try to take the edge off the ick factor, the Burts make it clear that they aren’t trying to tell everyone they should go do a swan dive into the nearest dumpster. What they hope to do is help people begin to come up with creative ways of living less wasteful and less consumptive lifestyles.

So what do you think, Green Options Nation? Would you snatch perfectly good items out of a corporate dumpster that would otherwise be headed for the landfill, even if it meant getting a little dirty?

More info: Daniel’s dumpster diving FAQ

Photo courtesy of the Burts.

Trees, agricultural waste, storm debris and trash are all viable fuel sources for ethanol, using the Coskata process. This highly flexible technology allows future manufacturing plants to cater to locally available materials, making ethanol viable in parts of the globe that would not use corn or sugar cane for fuel. Argonne National Laboratory tests show that greenhouse gas emissions are up to 84% lower for Coskta ethanol than conventional gasoline. It has a net energy balance of up to 7.7, compared to 1.3 for corn-based ethanol. These results were achieved with a production cost of $1 a gallon when timber was used as an ethanol fuel source.

On face of it, you would think that garbage would be the cheapest way to produce fuel, given the flexibility of the Coskata process. In fact, one of the most available and economically viable fuel sources is trees, with the low price tag of $50 a ton. There is a very efficient infrastructure for harvesting and transporting trees. They are available throughout the year, unlike some agricultural products. It is actually cheaper to use trees than sorted garbage and agricultural waste.

To make a dent in the 140 billon gallons of gasoline consumed in the US each year, new infrastructures and technologies need to be developed. A paradigm shift is needed in how we view and handle “waste.”

A study by the DOE and the USDA found that the US does have “a sufficient sustainable supply of biomass sufficient to displace 30% or more of the country’s present petroleum consumption…About 368 million dry tons of sustainably removable biomass could be produced on forestlands, and about 998 million dry tons could come from agricultural lands.”

Of the forestland biomass in the study, only 14% was comprised of newly harvested trees. We need to gain the ability to economically utilize residues from wood pulp, processing mills and construction debris. Consistent supplies need to be created, while maintaining low transportation and handling costs. It is not logical to send these valuable materials be wasted.

When looking at the agricultural landscape, the situation is ripe for change. Of the agricultural biomass in the study, over 50% is available from annual crop residues and animal manure. Current technology lacks techniques to make these products extremely dense, reducing storage and transport costs. We can put a man on the moon, yet we don’t have adequate technology and infrastructure for transporting agricultural waste to produce cost-effective ethanol.

This is where the marketplace can shine. There is money to be made by advancing the technologies necessary to make ethanol from waste.

Meanwhile, Coskata has hit the ground running. They announced a strategic alliance with IMC, Inc. yesterday, the leading ethanol plant design and build firm, that will construct their first plant. Expected to open at the end of 2010, this plant will utilize the Coskata process.

Coskata is very well positioned to shift the transportation fuels industry. They have formed an alliance with General Motors, who will increase production of flex-fuel cars that run off of either ethanol or gasoline. The Renewable Fuels Standard requires 21 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels to be used by 2022, which excludes corn and sugar as fuel sources. In addition, the Farm Bill offers a $.60-$.67 a gallon producer credit. Oil currently costs $87 a barrel.

The economic conditions are ripe for a shift away from fossil fuels. Coskata ethanol can be produced for under $1 a gallon and $.50-$1.00 less at the pump. Developing technology and infrastructure to utilize agricultural and forestland waste is the next step for large-scale renewable biofuels.

Note: General Motors paid for the travel and meal expenses associated with my tour of the Coskata laboratory.

Photo Credit: Coskata

The legislation the EU is considering would require all member countries to create national waste prevention programs and increase recycling efforts.

The framework they're creating would employ a "hierarchy" of waste preference. "First prevention, then re-use, recycling, other recovery operations and, as a last resort, safe and environmentally sound disposal."

A promising invention that I found today is a mobile machine that takes any type of garbage and converts it into electricity or ethanol. Leave it to the U.S. military to commission it and the scientists at Purdue University to create it. Such a device allows the U.S. to remove any evidence of its presence on the battlefield, while also providing a useful product for its activities. The diesel engine is powered by propane and methanol which is created in a process called gasification. (To learn more about gasification, click here.)