Dear Editor:
RE: Erin and Puslinch councils request water taking by BlueTriton be limited to five years, not 10 (June 23).
The big trouble with any more years of water taking, let alone five, comes down to simple arithmetic – and masses of trash.
In Hillsburgh alone, the permit has historically allowed 1.1 million litres of precious spring water to be taken daily, 365 days per year. That’s the equivalent of 2.2 million half-litre plastic bottles per day, the most common production size.
The water-bottling industry association claims 60 per cent of plastic PET bottles are recycled – that’s a mighty generous over-estimate according to the Wellington Water Watchers – but it still means more than 850,000 plastic bottles per day could escape our recycling boxes and land instead in local ditches and waterways, landfills and incinerators.
That’s 300 million plastic bottles every year from Hillsburgh alone if the full water quota is taken. Even one tenth this number is atrocious.
Town of Erin councillor Mike Robins called the “continued production and distribution of plastic water bottles … abusive to our environment”. But five years carried the day, keeping the door open to more mind-boggling mountains of trash.
When will our local councils and the provincial government finally and forever just say no to all this unnecessary and unwanted plastic junk?
Liz Armstrong,
Erin