Too Absent Herald

For the second time in less than a week, I have discovered that we have taken a collective leap into the future. First it was the brain chip. Now, in the middle of rural Texas, I bought a bottle of water that boasts a new technology on its back. The company is called Biota Spring Water, and right behind the little gratuitous picture of a Rocky Mountain, it claims that the plastic bottle is constructed using a new technology. According to the back label, whose veracity I presume is regulated by some government agency, “BIOTA Spring Water is the World’s First bottled water/beverage packaged in a Planet Friendly ™ bottle.” What does this mean? Apparently, the bottle is made using corn, rather than the oil that is usually used in the plastic-making process. This means that given the right conditions (high heat, high humidity, and high levels of micro-organisms), the plastic bottle will break down into water, carbon dioxide and organic material in about 3 months.

This again is something that seemed unimaginable. I was raised believing that plastic was a necessary evil, that could be treated but not cured, using the three R’s. But now we’re in the future and we have the technology to composte plastics. Somehow this seems even more unbelievable than the brainchip. If they can combine the two technologies, then that will serve as the third posting to this pair.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 9:27 am and is filed under the small stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.