The chair of Blue Bayfield says progress is being made on the elimination of single-use plastic water bottles, but he says it's still a very slow process.
Thursday is Bottled Water Free Day around the world.
Ray Letheran says the three pillars of a Blue Community are that water is a human right, water should not be privatized and denied to anyone in the world, and every effort should be made to eliminate single-use water bottles.
Letheran also says while many people believe bottled water is better than municipal water, the fact is, 40% of bottled water starts out as tap water and 45% of bottled water tested in the United States didn't pass the standard testing for municipal water.
Letheran says another very disturbing fact about bottled water is that around the world only 5% of water bottles get recycled. He says that figure is much better in Canada because Canadians tend to be better at recycling. But the result is still a huge buildup of waste plastic in the oceans and a greater amount of waste plastic in the Great Lakes. And one of the biggest problems with waste plastic is it doesn't go away for a very long time, creating serious problems for marine life as it is often mistaken for food.