Can sea fishing help the environment a little?

[John D]

Hello everybody,

I was watching an extremely good program by David Attenbrough yesterday. I think it was called 'Can we save our planet?'. To cut a long story short one major contributor to the increasing levels of energy consumption is the amount of energy used by households. This is not only for living essentials but also for leisure and play time use too.

Anyway the point I am trying to make here is that this is another angle we can use in our argument for protecting not only Bass but the sport of sea angling as a whole. What I mean to say is that the better the quality of sea angling is the more new people are likely to take up the sport and the more current sea anglers will actually fish. Hence the less people staying indoors and using energy.

I know this may sound a bit trivial but I think it is an extremely fair and important point.
So the next time you are writing a letter to a politician in support of protecting Bass and other sea fish stocks this could be used as an argument. What will also make this an effective tool is that the same department in the Government is responsible for the same two issues i.e. fish stocks and the environment.

Regards,
John D.

[corbyeire]

BOTTLED WATER:
Pouring Resources Down the Drain

Emily Arnold and Janet Larsen

The global consumption of bottled water reached 154 billion liters (41
billion gallons) in 2004, up 57 percent from the 98 billion liters
consumed five years earlier. Even in areas where tap water is safe to
drink, demand for bottled water is increasing-producing unnecessary
garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy. Although in the
industrial world bottled water is often no healthier than tap water, it
can cost up to 10,000 times more. At as much as $2.50 per liter ($10 per
gallon), bottled water costs more than gasoline.

The United States is the world's leading consumer of bottled water, with
Americans drinking 26 billion liters in 2004, or approximately one
8-ounce glass per person every day. Mexico has the second highest
consumption, at 18 billion liters. China and Brazil follow, at close to
12 billion liters each. Ranking fifth and sixth in consumption are Italy
and Germany, using just over 10 billion liters of bottled water each.
(See data <http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2006/Update51_data.htm>.)

Italians drink the most bottled water per person, at nearly 184 liters
in 2004-more than two glasses a day. Mexico and the United Arab Emirates
consume 169 and 164 liters per person. Belgium and France follow close
behind, with per capita consumption near 145 liters annually. Spain
ranks sixth, at 137 liters each year.

Some of the largest increases in bottled water consumption have occurred
in developing countries. Of the top 15 per capita consumers of bottled
water, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Mexico have the fastest
growth rates, with consumption per person increasing by 44-50 percent
between 1999 and 2004. While per capita rates in India and China are not
as high, total consumption in these populous countries has risen
swiftly-tripling in India and more than doubling in China in that
five-year period. And there is great potential for further growth. If
everyone in China drank 100 8-ounce glasses of bottled water a year
(slightly more than one fourth the amount consumed by the average
American in 2004), China would go through some 31 billion liters of
bottled water, quickly becoming the world's leading consumer.

In contrast to tap water, which is distributed through an
energy-efficient infrastructure, transporting bottled water long
distances involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. Nearly a
quarter of all bottled water crosses national borders to reach
consumers, transported by boat, train, and truck. In 2004, for example,
Nord Water of Finland bottled and shipped 1.4 million bottles of Finnish
tap water 4,300 kilometers (2,700 miles) from its bottling plant in
Helsinki to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia can afford to import the water it needs, but bottled water
is not just sold to water-scarce countries. While some 94 percent of the
bottled water sold in the United States is produced domestically,
Americans also import water shipped some 9,000 kilometers from Fiji and
other faraway places to satisfy the demand for chic and exotic bottled
water.

Fossil fuels are also used in the packaging of water. The most commonly
used plastic for making water bottles is polyethylene terephthalate
(PET), which is derived from crude oil. Making bottles to meet
Americans' demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million
barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a
year. Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle
water each year.

After the water has been consumed, the plastic bottle must be disposed
of. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86 percent of
plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or
litter. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic byproducts such as
chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals. Buried water bottles can
take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade. Almost 40 percent of the PET
bottles that were deposited for recycling in the United States in 2004
were actually exported, sometimes to as far away as China-adding to the
resources used by this product.

In addition to the strains bottled water puts on our ecosystem through
its production and transport, the rapid growth in this industry means
that water extraction is concentrated in communities where bottling
plants are located. For example, water shortages near beverage bottling
plants have been reported in Texas and in the Great Lakes region of
North America. Farmers, fishers, and others who depend on water for
their livelihoods suffer from the concentrated water extraction when
water tables drop quickly.

Studies show that consumers associate bottled water with healthy living.
But bottled water is not guaranteed to be any healthier than tap water.
In fact, roughly 40 percent of bottled water begins as tap water; often
the only difference is added minerals that have no marked health
benefit. The French Senate even advises people who drink bottled mineral
water to change brands frequently because the added minerals are helpful
in small amounts but may be dangerous in higher doses.

The French Senate also noted that small, localized problems with tap
water can cause a widespread loss of confidence in municipal supplies.
In fact, in a number of places, including Europe and the United States,
there are more regulations governing the quality of tap water than
bottled water. U.S. water quality standards set by the Environmental
Protection Agency for tap water, for instance, are more stringent than
the Food and Drug Administration's standards for bottled water.

There is no question that clean, affordable drinking water is essential
to the health of our global community. But bottled water is not the
answer in the developed world, nor does it solve problems for the 1.1
billion people who lack a secure water supply. Improving and expanding
existing water treatment and sanitation systems is more likely to
provide safe and sustainable sources of water over the long term. In
villages, rainwater harvesting and digging new wells can create more
affordable sources of water.

The United Nations Millennium Development Goal for environmental
sustainability calls for halving the proportion of people lacking
sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015. Meeting this goal
would require doubling the $15 billion a year that the world currently
spends on water supply and sanitation. While this amount may seem large,
it pales in comparison to the estimated $100 billion spent each year on
bottled water. © 2006 Earth Policy Institute

[John D]

Wow, that's very interesting Corbyeire. It's amazing how ignorant us humans are (myself included!). I'll reduce the amount of bottled water I drink.

Cheers,
John D.