Kurt Archer

Often in conversation you may hear comments about growing water shortages, or the fact that bottled water is no better than tap water.  Of course both of these are true, however the depth of this situation is far graver than we imagine it to be. What seems to miss the media’s attention is the massive protests that are led in against water giants like Nestle, Coca-Cola, Suez, Vivendi and others. All over the world, water privatization is on the increase, and at what cost?

The building of dams around the world have displaced millions of people in the 20th century. Water ways, aquafers, and natural irrigation channels are being dried up or pumped into plastic bottles and sold to us. That is like someone coming into your home, stealing your most prized family heirloom, wrapping it in a nice package and selling it back to you at 10x the price you paid for it in the first place.

Is it so hard to keep water healthy and accessible to everyone? It seems that more and more politicians are failing to stand up for what should be their jobs – to protect the basic security of citizens! There certainly is nothing more basic than water.

I just finished watching “FLOW: For love of water“.

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In other news, Delhi announced recently that they’ve banned plastic bags altogether to fight our dependency on this polluting convenience. After the Oct 2nd nation wide ban on smoking, India is taking even more bold steps on the fight against climate change.

Plastic bags have become such an item of dependence that shop keepers simply don’t know what else to use for their goods and liquids. Rightly so, it will be an uphill battle, but the government is more sure than ever that this is the right step, and it will take time to adapt, however after the initial two month period, shopkeepers caught providing the bags could be fined upwards of 1 lakh rupees (roughly $2,000 USD) or upto 5 years of jail term.

With such a move we will begin to see a demand for cloth and glass making a comeback in India, as these two are the most viable alternatives to plastic bags. No doubt this would also spin off some R&D on bio-degradable plastics and weaning off of petroleum based plastic for the more carbon neutral alternative of bio plastics (soy, vegetable oil, corn stalk).

I wonder what the world would be like today if Ford was able to organize the plastics industry to build exclusively from soy and bioproducts rather than petroleum oil. Needless to say, world war 1 kick started the oil dependency in plastics movement.

A famous quote comes to mind that is so fitting, attributed to an ancient chinese proverb.

“When the winds of change are blowing, some people are building shelters, and others are building windmills.”