Read'n'Seed 3: Second quarter of "Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World"

For the Second quarter of the book I covered 9 chapters, pages 27-53. The main topics that these chapters covered are good and bad solutions to the plastic problem. These chapters are about searching for solutions.

The first chapter talks about bottled water. As you may have noticed, bottled water is pretty popular. By the turn of the century, 22 billion U.S. gallons were bottled and sold; it was just 300 million gallons in 1970. That's 1.5 million tons of plastics per year from bottles. I agree with the author when he says that single use water containers probably emerged because of demand for on-the-go societies. According to the author, 25% of bottled water is traded and consumed outside of it's original country and another 25% is actually tap water. It seems like a big waste of plastic to buy bottled water that you could get out of your own facet.

The book talks about some solutions to reduce packaging. Some activists believe there should be post-consumer content laws, which would require producers to use a given percentage of recycled materials in the bottles they produce. Though there are many ideas,there is at least one solution for single-use bottles and that is "clean water, flowing from taps, water coolers, fountains, and home filtration equipment, and toted around in reusable containers." In other words, don't buy bottled water. Get it from home and use a reusable water bottle. The correct answer to the paper or plastic question is "neither." We want to eliminate, reduce, refill and recycle but even better then that would be to come up with better ways of consuming, producing, packaging and reusing products. Instead of settling for the lesser of two evils (paper or plastic) as the author puts it, we need to change how we live our lives.

This quarter of the book talked a lot about Extended Producer Responsibility or EPR. EPR means that a packages end-of-life is the responsibility of it's manufacturer or distributor. As of 2003, 31 countries adopted EPR or take back laws. The U.S. is not one of them. The EU (European Union) has been strengthening the standards of packaging. The book even said that lawmakers in most countries don't question whether there should be national take-back laws for products but instead question what form makes the most sense. However, the U.S. remains on holdout in adopting EPR legislation and is not included as being one of those countries.

It's nice to know that some places are making a change, however, I wish the U.S. would follow the E.U.'s example. We need to think of better solutions and implement them. I think it would help to have EPR laws. Holding manufacturer's and distributors accountable is something to be done because they are the ones who design, advertise, and distribute the waste in the first place.