What is going on here folks...earlier this week a county in California says they will ban our Happy Meal toys and now Concord, Mass. plans to take away our plastic bottles

What's next

Are they gonna pick whether I wear boxers or briefs?

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news...94/detail.html

Its terrible! These kinds of things really trouble me!

I think this is absolutely fantastic. I think it would also be wonderful if they went one step further and banned plastic bottled soda. Not only better for the environment but better for health. In one of my psych classes last year a girl did a study on rats exposed to too much plastic - the rats grew ambiguous genitalia and it was nearly impossible to tell which were male and which were female. Yikes!

When I lived in Europe they only had glass bottled Coca Cola products, and local beer. If you saved the glass bottles you could sell them back to the plants for them to be boiled and reused. Fantastic!

Growing up as a kid we always we able to take pop bottles back to the store for candy $$$

We drink tap water here....Angie has a brita filter for her water jug in the fridge....I'm fine with it unfiltered.

Angie and all my kids have water bottles that use filters...they can fill up out of the gutter if they want....

I have a plastic bottle that I re-use for work until it just gets too "used"...usually lasts me well over 3-4 months...

We recycle all our plastic/glass/cardboard and paper here....

I really don't think the plastic bottles are the problem...

I think it's people just don't really give a damn and our basically lazy...

the government isn't going to stop that....

totally agree, there are chemicals in certain plastic grades that are very harmful to us. Not to mention the ones that were the worst were plastics used for baby bottles and other products. I would love it if we went back to glass again.

Ahhh... The 'beautiful' people of Massachusetts are at it again... I can say it, I was one of them.... I'm sitting here putting a lot of salt on my Happy meal and rinsing of the toy off with my plastic bottle of water... p.s. I do recycle... and reuse everything I can, but where is this going to stop ?

I'm truly horrified that a town would try to do something positive for the planet, for our national security, and for their own health. How dare they?!

/sarcasm

its definitely a good thing.
just get reusable water bottles, better for us anyway.

and plus when youre a kid all you want in the happy meal is the toy anyway, and the kids wont want to go to mcdonalds err whereever because there isnt a toy for them

lol..

I'll buy one 1 Liter plastic bottle and reuse it for a few months and than recycle it with other plastic bottles. I want to buy some reusable containers to drink from but my hubby leaves them in his truck and than I have nothing to use. Gonna have to get tougher with him on that. lol

As I mentioned before...I recycle just about anything I put my hands on in our home.

I was in high school for the first Earth Day 40 years ago....

we grew up with the..."If it's yellow it's mellow...brown flush it down"...

I just think there are probably 50+ things worse at fast food restaurants than the toys...

I also think it is just silly about the water bottles....like putting a band-aid on open heart surgery....

I voted in the poll...looks like almost 75% agree with me YES!!

of course they do....

I am pretty sure cities around America right now have much bigger issues they should be focused on than happy meal toys and small water bottles....

no wonder cities are going broke everywhere!

We called it Ecology back then, 'littering' was the biggest culprit at the time here...we've made progress.. well, if you don't look on the bottoms of rivers and streams....

I still use the word "ecology" and younger people look at me and say..."huh"...
as they are thinkin'..."what were you smokin' back then dude?"

[old lady] I can remember when we got our pop in 16-oz bottles, in cardboard carrier boxes, that we had to take back to the store when they were all empty; or when vending machines had pop in glass bottles and there were wooden crates next to the machine where you put the dead soldiers. They weren't recycled; they were just taken back to the bottlery, cleaned and reused! [/old lady]

There are (at least) two issues with plastic bottles.

1) Health. It's pretty clear that there are increased health risks associated with over-exposure to food products in contact with some kinds of plastic. Since I don't use bottled water, I haven't bothered to research how risky bottled water is but it's always sad and frustrating to me to see folks going out of their way to take positive steps for their health or the health of their children (by drinking water -- and bottled water *seemed* even healthier than tap) and it backfires.

2) Ecology. Plastic bottles waste a lot of energy and water EVEN IF THEY ARE RECYCLED. Litter can also be a concern.

Should a town pass an ordinance banning them? Personally, I think I'd support that even if it were something analogous that did affect me personally. Movements like this require beach fronts to help raise awareness of the problems in the general population, even if the ban does not spread.

I think that certainly, a point that shouldn't be over looked is the fact that it was a town who came together to vote for this ordinance on their own. Small, local, government at work. If 75% of their population disagreed with it, it wouldn't have passed. They wanted it, they took action for it, and they got it.


..Awesome..!