NEW YORK TIMES - APRIL 19, 2009
How Green Is My Bottle?
BY Daniel Goleman and Gregory Norris
"... Consider, for example, this paragon of eco-virtue: the stainless steel water bottle that lets us hydrate without discarding endless plastic bottles. Using a method called life cycle assessment, we have evaluated the environmental and health impact of a stainless steel thermos — from the extraction and processing of its ingredients, to its manufacture, distribution, use and final disposal. There were some surprises. What we think of as “green” turns out to be less so (and, yes, sometimes more so) than we assume.
So, is stainless steel really better than plastic?
One stainless steel bottle is obviously much worse than one plastic bottle. Producing that 300-gram stainless steel bottle requires seven times as much fossil fuel, releases 14 times more greenhouse gases, demands the extraction of hundreds of times more metal resources and causes hundreds of times more toxic risk to people and ecosystems than making a 32-gram plastic bottle. If you’re planning to take only one drink in your life, buy plastic.
But chances are buying that stainless steel bottle will prevent you from using and then throwing away countless plastic bottles. And think of the harm done to the environment by making more and more plastic — the electricity needed to form polyethylene terephthalate resin into bottles, the fossils fuels burned to produce this electricity, the energy used and emissions released from mining the coal and converting crude oil to fuel, and on and on. What it comes down to is this: if your stainless steel bottle takes the place of 50 plastic bottles, the climate is better off, and if it gets used 500 times, it beats plastic in all the environment-impact categories studied in a life cycle assessment.
It’s important to keep in mind that the 21st century has inherited from the 20th (and sometimes the 19th) manufacturing processes and industrial chemicals that were developed when no one knew — or cared that much — about environmental damage. But even though climate change demands urgent ecological action, this crisis also offers vast entrepreneurial opportunities; we need to re-invent everything with an eye to protecting the planet.
Then again, some old solutions we shouldn’t discount. Before stainless steel thermoses, before bottled water, we already had an eco-friendly method of getting water: drinking fountains."
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For details of the extraction process, manufacture, distribution, use and disposal of stainless steel bottles read more.
Cliff B. says:
This is really a principle that applies to all green efforts, and one where we are easily misled. The Breakeven Point of a product is charted by companies, wherein they must analyze how many to make of something before the cost of manufacture and tooling "breaks even"...and they are no longer losing money. This also applies to using products. When is it cost effective, and when is it environmentally effective in relationship to all costs. As a customer, we look at when a product breaks even economically for us. If we buy a Prius and consider the environmental costs of Lithum batteries,and their replacement every 6 years or so, we need to weigh whether or not the amount of fossil fuel saved is worth the other degradations.
There is not a source out here to give us all that info on every product. We buy because we believe we are making a wise choice. Sometime we are. Sometimes we are not. The balances tip with each new revelation. What if the batteries of the Prius were made by prison labor, would it still be the best choice? What if the prisoners were Tibetan rebels?
Most stainless water bottles come from China. China has virtually no iron /steel resources. They import it, and still sell to the world cheaper than the rest of the world can do it. How?
My point is that we try to do the best we can with the info provided to us, and while our intentions can be good, there are tremendous difficulties in arriving at a truly sustainable world. It is one very small decision at a time.