I stumbled across this short video called The Facts about Bottled Water by Natasha Murray and it immediately got me thinking.  Why do so many people drink bottled water? Is it because they are ignorant of the environmental effects? Is it because they actually like the taste better?

After thinking about this for a few days, I realized it’s mostly because of one reason: people are lazy! People know that a re-usable bottle is better than a plastic one.  Even if you can recycle it, it is still plastic!  People may say they like the taste better, but how much can someone tell the difference between bottled water and tap water?

I did an experiment with a team in my last marketing class and we did a blind taste test with water.  Our results? No one could pick out which glass was the tap water! It just goes to show that people are stuck in their usual opinions and are too stubborn to change.

So this brings me to my final conclusion that people are lazy.  People know the environmental side effects and apparently they can’t tell the difference between bottled and tap water when tested so why are they still drinking bottled water?

Because people are too lazy to change their behaviours!  They don’t want to have to remember a re-usable water bottle, they don’t want to go find a water fountain, and they think they don’t want to drink water that tastes bad.  But the funny thing is people will wait in line and pay for water that tastes the same as free water and that contributes to ruining our environment!

So in the end yes people are lazy but its more the fact that people don’t want to change their behaviours.  Whether this is because it’s too difficult or too foreign, I don’t know.  But I do know that we all need to start making a better effort to change our behaviours.  Because if not the earth as we know it won’t be here for us too much longer.

I recently read an article in BC living which was talking about companies that had partaken in greenwashing in the past few years. These big name companies ranged from Coca-Cola to Frito Lay to Apple.  Instead of these companies actually becoming more sustainable, which would help their company become more efficient, save money and become better for the world, they decided to just create the illusion of being green. This saddens me and makes me lose a little bit of hope in humanity.  Instead of spending money on marketing their supposedly green ways, they could have put this money towards actually making their company more sustainable and making this world a slightly better place. They could have also helped their company as a whole more respectable.

The crazy part is that this isn’t only happening in companies but it is happening in countries too!  And you might think it is only happening in countries that aren’t as aware or developed but you would be wrong.  It is happening right here in Canada.  The government has cut down programs that are involved with climate research and other environmental programs.  And although the government has said they have set a plan that will cut down tar sands emissions this plan won’t be implemented for at least ten years, which is just putting off the problem.

These companies and countries are the leaders in their industries and the world and if they can’t seem to take a stand and become more sustainable it makes me wonder if anyone will.  It is obvious that these companies and countries are just there to make money, but as we talked about it class, there needs to be a world there to make money from! Do they not care about this because they just want to be the most profitable at the moment? Do they think these choices will not effect their generation? Because if they answer is yes to these questions they are sadly mistaken. I wonder what it will take to make them realize this.  Hopefully it doesn’t come to the end of the world to make them regret their decisions.

Check out the links below for the articles to see which companies and countries have been greenwashing.  Also check out the last link to learn how to spot a company who isn’t actually sustainable but is just greenwashing.

http://www.bcliving.ca/home/is-2010-the-year-of-corporate-greenwashing

http://www.bcliving.ca/health/government-greenwashing-governments-that-need-to-step-up-their-green-game

http://www.bcliving.ca/home/avoiding-the-greenwash

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