Bring a plastic water bottle at your own hazard; the wave of widespread perspective is coming back down against you. From high rating documentaries, to articles and political debate, the hot topic on the soapbox is the horror around bottled water and the waste of resources the industry generates.

The producing, transporting and removal of water in petrochemical plastic bottles requires tremendous use of water as well as energy, and produces huge measures of greenhouse gases and waste.

Director of the upcoming 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 people behind Tapped are pushing the show with an across-America roadshow, receiving donations from people to reduce their water bottle waste and exchanging their used plastic water bottle 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. From the pen of Annie Leonard of the famous ‘The Story of Stuff’, this film shows the process that is behind convincing Americans into purchasing at least five hundred million bottles of water a week, instead of a few cents cost for a drink from the tap. Check out her documentary on You Tube.

Through her book ‘Bottlemania’, investigator Elizabeth Royte demonstrates one of the monumental marketing coups of our century and provides a sudden environmental wakeup call. She investigates the problems we must eventually understand. Who appropriates our water? What can happen when a bottled-water business possesses your town’s source? Is the water coming from your tap absolutely safe? What is the environmental cost of production, transportation and waste of every plastic water bottle?

Politicians all around the international community are realising that they need to start the campaign – especially when the meetings at which they serve are huge consumers of bottled water. How often do we witness a politician at a government function sipping from a water bottle. It is probable that they might drink from a water glass in Parliament House.

Leslie Samuelrich of Corporate Accountability International, held that “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 in Australia to ban the retail of bottled water. At least 60 townships in the States and a handful of cities in Canada and the United Kingdom have now prohibited the expenditure of taxpayer holdings on bottled water.

Surely these dilemmas will be on the agenda at World Water Week 2010 from September 5 to 11 in Stockholm, Sweden, the annual meeting for the world’s most urgent water-related dilemmas.

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