Toxic Free Canada – Getting Off the Bottle
This is a story I wrote for Vancity in 2010. Part of a series of 18 stories about their grantees.
Vancity supports the work Toxic Free Canada does encouraging BC resident to get off the bottle and drink tap water.
Can something as simple as using a refillable container to carry your thirst-quenching beverage change the world? Yes, actually, and in a big way.
Picture 174 full-sized pick-up trucks, payloads filled, dropping off their contents at dumps in British Columbia every day for a whole year. That’s 63,354 trucks dumping their contents in BC landfills. What are they carrying? Garbage? Items that can’t be recycled? Nope. They’re carrying 130 million plastic water bottles and plastic juice and soda containers. 100% recyclable plastic drink bottles that British Columbians have thrown in the trash.
Sean Griffin, research coordinator for Toxic Free Canada pictured this waste (and the 478 million plastic bottles that are recycled each year in BC) and decided to do something about it. Sean researched the problem; he wrote a report about the problem; and, with the Toxic Free Canada team, came up with a plan to solve the problem – a campaign called “Getting off the Bottle.”