Where Does Recycled Plastic Go? To China and Back October 15, 2010

Favorite:

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/09/30/The_Story_Behind_Our_Obsession_with_Bottled_Water

Peter Gleick, author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, briefly summarizes the economics of shipping recycled plastic to China. Once in China, plastic waste is used to manufacture other products -- which are then exported back to the U.S.

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Peter Gleick, scientist and freshwater expert, talks about his latest book: Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water.

Tap water is safe almost everywhere in the U.S. It takes far more water to make the plastic bottle than it even holds. Most bottled water is simply water from somebody else's tap! Why on earth does this industry continue to thrive? - California Academy of Sciences

Peter H. Gleick is co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California. Dr. Gleick is an internationally recognized water expert and in 2003 was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship for his science and policy work on water issues worldwide. In 2006 he was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences. His research and writing address the critical connections between water and human health, the human right to water, the hydrologic impacts of climate change, sustainable water use, privatization and globalization and international conflicts over water resources.

He serves on the boards of numerous journals and organizations and was elected an Academician of the International Water Academy in Oslo, Norway in 1999. Dr. Gleick is the author of many scientific papers and five books, including the biennial water report The World's Water.