Water in Orlando

02023-01-31 | Photos, Touring | 3 comments

IMG 8377
I have encountered these water fountains in most airports and made use of them on every journey. They nearly always show a red light because the filter needs to be changed. It’s a good indication that people can use their own water bottles and forego plastic, when given the choice. I have watched the counter in some airports go from a few thousand to many hundreds of thousands. Like McDonalds, who began counting each hamburger sold until they reached Billions and Billions Sold!… at some point counting becomes as useless as counting the stars while lying on one’s back.

I had never seen one of these in a venue before. What a brilliant idea! I wish every venue would have one of these.

Seen at The Plaza Live.

3 Comments

  1. Steve

    We have these at the college where I teach. Every hallway. Adjacent to every restroom. We spent lots of money upgrading all the buildings to make these ubiquitous.

    AND YET … you see most of the students with plastic single-use bottles. And these single-use plastic bottles are almost universally thrown away. I know at our college, we filter out single-use plastic containers and discard them in the garbage because the local recycler we contract with will not recycle single-use plastic containers.

    I wish we could completely move away from single-use plastic containers as a society … particularly in light of the latest Greenpeace plastic report (October, 2022):

    “Mechanical and chemical recycling of plastic waste has largely failed and will always fail because plastic waste is: (1) extremely difficult to collect, (2) virtually impossible to sort for recycling, (3) environmentally harmful to reprocess, (4) often made of and contaminated by toxic materials, and (5) not economical to recycle.”

    Also from the report:

    “We are at a decision point on plastic pollution. It is time for corporations to turn off the plastic tap. Instead of continuing to greenwash and mislead the American public, industry should stand on the right side of history this November and support an ambitious Global Plastics Treaty that will finally end the age of plastic by significantly decreasing production and increasing refill and reuse.”

    ref: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/new-greenpeace-report-plastic-recycling-is-a-dead-end-street-year-after-year-plastic-recycling-declines-even-as-plastic-waste-increases/

    Reply
    • ottmar

      I agree with all of that, Steve.

      My partner refuses to get take-out from any restaurant that doesn’t accept that we bring our own glass containers. Some cheerfully agree, some reluctantly agree, and all others don’t get our business.

      I have friends who take a glass container to every meal they get at a restaurant. Portions are almost always too much and this way they are ready to take the rest home without having to ask the restaurant for a plastic or styrofoam container.

      Everybody was up in arms when lead paint was outlawed and then lead-free paint quickly became more durable than leaded paint had been. We need to stop using plastic where possible and I agree that we need to have laws to that effect.

      Reply
      • Steve

        And while I’m on it: The fact that many organic food products come in plastic packaging boggles my mind.

        What’s concerning is that if we even kick our oil addiction and the bottom drops out of the price of oil, plastic will get even cheaper. Oh my word.

        Reply

Leave a Reply to ottmar Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Archives

Images

Social

@Mastodon (the Un-Twitter)