The Brita Filter Dilemma
When I first moved to Los Angeles from New York City, I was taken aback by the taste of the tap water. After being spoiled by the refreshingly crisp taste of NYC tap water, I couldn’t bring myself to drink the water in LA, except under dire circumstances. I resorted to purchasing bottled water - large jugs that I would refill at the Glacier water stand in front of the local supermarket or 24-packs of bottled water (yes, shame on me).
I’m not proud of the water habit I acquired in my new habitat and have recently opted to use a Brita filtration system at home in lieu of purchasing bottled water. Little did I know, however, that while I was eliminating a large chunk of plastic bottle waste, I began amassing new plastic waste!
I was unaware that Brita (owned by Clorox) does not have a recycling program in place in North America as it does in Europe, which means that every used-up filter cartridge across the United States and Canada ends up in landfills. The amount of waste resulting from this cartridge pile-up seems quite staggering when you consider the fact that Brita has the #1 market share of pour-through filter cartridges in the U.S. and Canada. It is also the #1 faucet-mount filter in Canada and the #2 faucet-mount filter in the U.S (according to Clorox’s 2007 Annual Report).
Since Brita filters are recycled in Europe through its own private collection and recycling system, it should be possible for Clorox to implement a similar system here, right? So, what can we do?
For those of you that enjoy Brita-filtered water, but are hesitating to throw your filters away into your trash can, check out this organization I found - TakeBackTheFilter.org - and join their campaign to urge Clorox to develop a take-back recycling program. You can sign their petition; write a letter to a Clorox executive; or send in your used filter cartridges that they are collecting to deliver to Clorox en masse at some point in the future. How cool is that!?!
September 21st, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Thanks for mentioning the campaign! We have a brand new video up on YouTube based on Brita’s “Responsible Water” ads that we’ll be unveiling on the site later today. Here’s a link to it now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV6ztwmLsco
Beth
November 19th, 2008 at 4:03 am
Thanks for blogging about the Take Back The Filter campaign. We’ve had great success this week! Please check it out:
http://www.takebackthefilter.org/2008/11/brita-and-preserve-announce-filter.html
January 1st, 2012 at 7:19 am
My developer is trying to persuade me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the costs. But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using Movable-type on a number of websites for about a year and am worried about switching to another platform. I have heard fantastic things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can import all my wordpress content into it? Any help would be really appreciated!
January 4th, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Thanks for the info, I love the thought of electronic cigarettes, so I’m going to buy the Green Smoke one! Thanks