Concord, Mass., has become the first American city to ban the sale of bottled water. It wasn’t an uppity city council that made the decision. The residents voted:
The effort was lead by Jean Hill, an 82-year old activist, who lobbied neighbors and officials alike on the consequences of plastic bottles filling landfills and polluting local waters. “All these discarded bottles are damaging our planet, causing clumps of garbage in the oceans that hurt fish, and are creating more pollution on our streets,” says Hill. “This is a great achievement to be the first in the country to do this. This is about addressing an injustice.”
There’s an interesting photo here.
Wow! So many thoughts about the ramificatins of this action and I do want to be substantive here- My first thought was “That is really great that citizens can identify an issue that is important to them, garner support and change the circumstances in which they live.” I would much rather see this type of action than from a government that is far removed from the situation imposing on the people.
Quickly, my mind then ran to the bottlers and retail businesses that have invested heavily in providing a legal service to consumers who wanted to buy their product. After brief analysis, I have to say I put my trust with the people. It will be intersting to see if the decision stands.
I am confused by the activist statement that “This is about addressing an injustice.” Please explain it to me.
I think you should simply acknowledge that people say silly things and let it go at that. Silly things like this: A lot of people invest heavily in producing porn movies, a legal product. Would you feel sorry if Concord banned them?
From the article:
“The ban on plastic water bottle sales may be largely symbolic. Town officials aren’t sure they have the power to enact the ban without approval from the state.”
For sure, the bottlers and the oil industry disagrees with the ban. After oil, 17 million barrels of oil is used annually to produce plastic bottles.
I’m really grateful that our recycling center accepts these clear plastic bottles. I only wish that everyone within a 10-mile radius would take advantage of our center instead of discarding them anywhere they please.
For Contrarian:
The term “injustice” might better be replaced with “addressing the devastating results of producing these plastic bottles”.
I guess, however, that in Jean Hill’s mind, seeing large mammals choking to death on plastic IS an injustice.
Good heavens. Now I have to explain two errors I made in my initial comment. First, two subjects require a singular verb, so the verb should be “disagree”. Secondly, I meant to say:
“After ALL, 17 billion barrels…”
Looks like my poorly written comment is directly influenced by Jean Hill’s “confusing” statement.
Sybil- I’m glad someone besides me is embarrassed a split second after they hit the “post” button once in a while. I think David should upgrade this site so as to imcorporate spell/grammer check. It would help me out if no one else. Maybe I’ll be embarrassed to find out that the service already exists and that I am just uneducated as how to use it.
I can accept the statement including “devastating results”. I think the word “Injustice” is thrown around too casually these days. Everyone who has a contrary opinion about anything throws the word into their arguement. I believe it diminishes its meaning.
>”I think David should upgrade this site so as to imcorporate spell/grammer check”
I did test a couple Spell Check WordPress plugins the first time you requested this feature but they broke the website.
Workarounds:
I use Firefox for my web browser and that has the feature built in, kind of. It underlines questionable spelling but doesn’t give suggestions how to correct it. I switched over to Internet Explorer 8 to write this comment and don’t see a similar feature in Microsofts web browser.
If changing web browsers is a hassle, most email programs do have spell check built in so many people key their text into the email program (for the spell checking) then copy and paste into a blog comment.
Hi, Steve,
I do use Firefox and I find it almost indispensable. However, it couldn’t differentiate between my choice of the “spellable” word oil and all. Surprisingly, it didn’t catch my plural verb faux pas.
The trouble is that we are all too old. Any young person will tell you that it is not important to use proper spelling and grammer on a blog.
We’re not supposed to care. I just can’t do it.