Art by Chris Jordan depicting the 2 million single use bottles used in the U.S. every five minutes. Though it's unusual for someone living in the US, as a general rule, I don't buy foods that come packaged. That includes drinks packaged in recyclable bottles. Even though bottles can be recycled, the thought of the excessive amounts of energy used in the process and the sheer numbers of single serving beverages consumed in our country, makes me turn away at the grocery store shelf.

Every now and then, however, I want an Adina Mojita drink, because it is delicious, organic, and refreshing and I know the glass bottle can be recycled. It's okay, right? In the hierarchy of choice, glass is better than plastic, so Adina drinks fit the environmental bill, right?

The answer is not so simple if you keep the heirarchy of three R's in mind: "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".

Zero Waste expert Paul Palmer tells us "recycling is the lowest form of reuse you can find. This is because the most important thing to reuse is not the materials of which an item is made but the function that it serves." The highest function of a bottle, plastic or glass, is as a container and this function is destroyed in the recycling process. When we have the choice to consume or not, recycling is a way to clear our conscience of our throw-away habit. If we put the bottle in the blue bin, all is well, right?

Palmer says "No." He points out that most recyclables end up in landfills or worse, and that it's not okay to rely on recycling as a solution to the ills of consumption.

To reinforce the idea, I ran across an image depicting the fate of bottle caps and other post consumber debris and I share the thought with you:

I looked a little further and learned that one quarter of the world's surface is congested with post-consumer, mostly plastic, debris that will never degrade. According to Moore, plastics

…photodegrade, a process whereby sunlight breaks them into progressively smaller pieces, all of which are still plastic polymers. In fact, the degradation eventually yields individual molecules of plastic, but these are still too tough for most anything—even such indiscriminate consumers as bacteria—to digest.

Translucent zooplankton are found with pieces of colored plastic in their bellies. Fish eat the plankton and we eat the fish. From the bottom of the food chain up, we are ingesting plastic. Moore's study shows that there are 6 pounds of debris to every one pound of plankton even in the remotest parts of the oceans.

I learned that birds are feeding ocean debris to their babies and 2 out of 5 chicks are dying. How about a turtle washed up on a tropical island with 1000 pieces of non-degradable discards in its body? Still want a soda? All the little pieces of plastic and metal, the lids, the lighters, the odds and ends that don't get recycled are floating in the middle of our ocean. So are tires, oil drums, diapers, and condoms, and bottles that could have been recycled, among other artifacts of our culture.

We can trace the world's environmental degradation directly to our choices in the store. This information fuels what I call the Point of Sale (POS) conscience that says “don't buy that single use container; there is a better alternative." If we don't keep up on the issues, it is easy to disconnect from the ocean and marine life, nature, and other victims of the far-reaching effects of contemporary human lifestyle. But harrowing pictures, like the one above, sink deep into our consciousness and help us make our daily choices.

Kombucha : Kombucha: According to GT Dave this cultured tea drink has been used for hundreds of years throughout the world as a daily health tonic. Image- wikipediaWhen I am at my favorite family-owned grocery , I stand in front of the cooler and rationalize my desire for a single-use beverage: Even though the package can be recycled, is there a better alternative? Do I have a sparkly homemade beverage at home that will satisfy my need for a quick refresher without any packaging or tranport costs? Can I be satisfied without relying on my city to get rid of (recycle) a bottle and cap for me?

More often than not, I can answer “Yes." In part because of my POS conscience, I make Kombucha on a regular basis and keep my home stocked with alternatives to factory bottled beverages. For water, I reject plastic bottles and use a refillable container like Klean Kanteen . This practice helps balance the desire for instant gratification with the POS conscience, the mind that remembers the tragedy of consumption and doesn't want to participate. So I leave the bottle on the shelf and go home for a glass of homemade sparkling lemonade, root beer, or kombucha.

Look forward to a DIY post on home brewing soda and other non-alcoholic sparklers.