Adventures in Extreme Recycling

Recently I took somewhat extreme measures in the interest of recycling and waste reduction. ‘Extreme’ is a relative term, of course, but it’s fair to say that this required a level of dedication—and effort—that went somewhat beyond my usual recycling practices. The experience demonstrated an important point about material waste and our overdependence on disposable plastic products.

I was going about my usual workplace business one morning in February of 2017 when a gentleman I know caught me in the corridor and said “Hey, Mike, I was wondering if you could help me with a little problem.” Ever willing (and curious) I said “sure!” and followed him to his office. Considering my typical Facilities Coordinator responsibilities—paired with my reputation for highly personalized, better-than-average customer service (not to toot my own horn too much…), knowledge of unusual and esoteric things, and willingness to assist with special problems—, it’s possible that I could be called upon at any given time to assist with anything from furniture reconfiguration, decorating advice, or a more comfortable office chair to repainting, workplace dirt (of the gossip type, of course), or disposing of an animal invader, alive or dead.

In this case, the coworker’s former office mate, who retired recently, had left behind in their shared office a staggering amount of bottled water hoarded over the years and left to slowly spoil in the drawers of several lateral file cabinets. Unfortunately, spoiled is an accurate assessment. Some of these bottles of water were more than eight years old; almost all of them had a crinkled, sucked-in appearance, as if the air had been vacuumed out of them; and many of them had apparently leaked, judging by the serious rust damage and black, sooty residue in the bottom of almost every drawer. As much as I would have liked to actually drink this water, it simply wouldn’t have been safe.

My coworker asked me if I could help him to get rid of all this water. No sane person with access to clean drinking water would ever consume the contents of these expired, deformed bottles, and he wanted the extra filing cabinets out of the office. I told him that I would be happy to help. Before he could even ask me what I planned to do with all the water, I explained that I had a special plan. Not one bottle’s worth of water would go to waste. Every single plastic bottle would enter the recycling stream. This water would be put to use, damn it. My coworker thought that I was crazy. “Well, if you’re actually willing to go to all that trouble…”

I counted and removed all of the bottles, packing them into cardboard Bankers boxes. There were 436 total. Maybe 50 of them stayed in our Facilities suite for watering plants; the rest went to the loading dock. I borrowed a neighbor’s pickup truck and swung by on a Saturday morning to load up the nine boxes. I took them all home. I immediately set to work opening the bottles up and pouring the water into my washing machine to aid with a couple of loads of laundry—and here’s where a troubling reality set in: for all these bottles, and all this plastic, it doesn’t actually amount to very much water at all. The wash cycles alone of two laundry loads amounted to more than 100 bottles of water. The plastic left over nearly filled three kitchen-sized garbage bags. The effort required and the end result were not proportional. Somehow I’d thought that this water would go farther than it did. I couldn’t believe it.

Don’t get me wrong: I understand that there’s great utility and convenience in bottled water, especially in parts of the world where sterile, safe piped drinking water isn’t readily accessible (or available at all). In crisis situations—disaster areas, warzones, or regions affected by severe drought, for example—it is indispensable. It means the difference between life and death. As an international traveler, I freely admit that I’m going to purchase and consume bottled water rather than tap water in many locations (although I will still make every effort to recycle, even if that means flying the empty bottles home). Similarly, it would be foolish or stunningly ignorant not to acknowledge that numerous communities in the United States have antiquated water systems—that our citizens have been exposed to, and continue to consume, water containing unacceptably high levels of lead. It's a fact that authorities have neglected this growing crisis, and it's a fact that officials have failed to protect consumers, including the most vulnerable of them, children. Then there are all the older homes and structures that, ideally, should have their pipes replaced since the solder sealing connections between pipe sections often contains lead. Bottled water has its place for sure.

The problem, in my opinion, is that the bottled water industry as a whole has created—not surprisingly—a psychological overdependence on these products and, for many people in the industrialized world, an exaggerated sense that bottled water is always better than tap water, and that tap water is always unsafe. I know people who feel exactly that way. My labor-intensive exercise in extreme reuse demonstrated just how much plastic is loaded into the consumer stream—and discarded—in the interest of consuming, well, not much water comparatively. A lot of that plastic doesn’t get recycled. A lot of it ends up in our street gutters, our streams and rivers, and our ocean. Decomposing plastic leaks toxins into soil and water—including, not surprisingly, the water inside the bottle. Water is heavy. Think of the amount of fuel required to transport it all. Think of the resources required to make the plastic bottles themselves. Think of the water depletion in areas where the corporations harvesting and bottling this water for mass-consumption pump it from the ground—or take it directly from the municipal water supply—then market it as fresh, clean, "pure" mountain spring water. (That's dishonesty, plain and simple.) Think of traditionally drought-affected regions like parts of California where these companies overburden and slowly drain the underground aquifers, then justify their greed while locals can’t pump enough water for gardens, farms, or vineyards. (Nestlé!)

Despite my efforts to salvage all this bottled water in what I jokingly call the Great SEI Bottled Water Atrocity of 2017, I am extremely grateful that my fellow SEI staff person approached me. Had it been anyone else to respond to the request for assistance, those hundreds of bottles of water would surely have been dumped, easily and without much thought, into our dumpsters. I simply couldn’t do it. My conscience, anchored by a strong commitment to environmental stewardship and responsibility, would not have permitted me to take the easy way out. I’m an educated white American guy who acknowledges his white privilege, and I could easily take my access to water for granted—but I don’t. It is such a precious resource that, to me, its flow and fall are analogous to life itself. My efforts are a proverbial drop in the bucket—mostly meaningless, devoid of real impact. I know this. But imagine if the majority of people thought and acted similarly. The difference, in my opinion, could change the world.

Incidentally, if you're wondering about my own drinking water, I prefer tap water run through a filter. I think that it tastes better than bottled almost all of the time. I carry water in a Nalgene, thermos, or other type of reusable vessel.