Carry a plastic water bottle at your own risk; the tide of public view is going on you. From big rating documentaries, to articles and politics, the biggest issue in our lives is the menace of bottled water and the waste of resources that the industry creates.

The processing, moving and disposal of water in petrochemical plastic bottles eats up large use of water and energy, and creates huge measures of greenhouse gases and waste.

Director of the hot new documentary ‘Tapped: get off the bottle’ Stephanie Soechtig says “1500 water bottles end up in landfill every second – that’s 30 million water bottles a day! We wanted to show people just how much waste is generated by bottled water.” The Tapped crew are promoting the show with their across-America roadshow, asking donations from Americans to reduce their water bottle numbers and taking their empty plastic water bottle in exchange for a reusable stainless steel bottle. Download Tapped from Amazon or iTunes.

Another short film ‘The Story of Bottled Water’ was released on World Water Day in March. By Annie Leonard of the critically acclaimed ‘The Story of Stuff’, this animated film explores the process that amounts to convincing Americans into purchasing around five hundred million bottles of water every week, compared with a few cents cost for tapwater. Find her animation on You Tube.

Through her book ‘Bottlemania’, author Elizabeth Royte demonstrates one of the most massive marketing takeovers of the twentieth century and gives a super environmental alarm bell. She asks the questions we must inevitably deal with. Who owns the water supply? What could happen when a bottled-water corporation stakes a claim on your town’s water source? Is the water that comes from the tap entirely safe? What is really the environmental factor of making, transporting and disposing of a single plastic water bottle?

Politicians from around the nation are beginning to understand that they have to start the campaign – markedly when the meetings where they serve are large consumers of bottled water. How often do we view a politician at a government function drinking from a water bottle. It is probable that they should be able to find a water glass in Parliament House.

Leslie Samuelrich of Corporate Accountability International, said “Cities and states are spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on bottled water, and that’s not to mention what’s spent to deal with all the plastic bottles that are thrown out.”

In July 2009, the NSW rural town of Bundanoon became the first community of Australia to stop the sale of bottled water. Some 60 towns in the American states and a handful in Canada and the United Kingdom have lately prevented the spending of taxpayer dollars on bottled water.

Surely these problems will be debated come World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the globe’s most problematic water-related dilemmas.

Article written by Tracey Bailey, founder of Biome Eco Stores.