Wanted: A tariff on thirst

TDT | Manama

Email : editor@newsofbahrain.com

With the mercury climbing and everybody advising us to stay hydrated, I think it is time to ponder over how much pollution we are generating when we quench our thirst. A very small percentage of people in Bahrain make it a habit to carry reusable water bottles and the first move is to buy a one-time use plastic bottle of water and discard it after it finishes. And where does the plastic go? To landfills and ultimately to our life-giving oceans. A big portion of the mismanaged or littered plastic waste globally comes from plastic bottles.

It is estimated that 14% of littered waste actually stems from beverage containers and 8 million tons of plastic bottles enter our oceans every year, where they destroy marine life at every level. Each bottle can take up to one thousand years to decompose.

You have already heard of microplastics entering the bloodstream and affecting the organs – did you know this can happen simply by drinking from a heated plastic bottle which has been left in your car for a couple of days?

What can we do to curb the plastic bottle waste issue? To begin with, the solution rests in our hands. Don’t leave home without a simple reusable glass bottle or the popular brushed steel bottle of water which can sit in your car or backpack.

We need to get our lawmakers to mandate more public drinking water fountains and also start a movement where restaurants will allow anybody to fill their water bottle for free – this is done in Europe and the UK. The many restaurants in Bahrain should have water jugs and glasses on tables so customers can help themselves to free drinking water and not be forced to buy plastic bottles of it.

We need shopping malls and hypermarkets to not only stop handing out plastic shopping bags but incorporate recycling plastic bottle waste into their CSR. Maybe a rewards system where customers disposing a plastic bottle into a designated recycling container get points and can spend it in the mall?

Finally, at fancy restaurants, I have found that many “branded” water bottles made of recyclable glass cost as much as a small side-dish while plastic bottles are cheaper. Could we please introduce some sanity into the water tariff and place a legal limit so that the public is not over-charged and chooses wisely?

(Captain Mahmood Al Mahmood is the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Tribune and the President of the Arab-African Unity Organisation for Relief, Human Rights and Counterterrorism)