WTF: Chicago Parks and Dasani

The Chicago Park District has partnered with Dasani, the plastic water bottle company, to raise funds for the parks. What??? Why partner with a plastic water bottle company when our parks are already littered with plastic trash? Why encourage people to buy plastic water bottles when we know Chicago has a terrible recycling rate? In 2016, Chicago only diverted 9% of all recyclable material from landfills. YIKES YIKES YIKES

 

Plastic water bottles cause severe damage to the environment and to human health. 18,834,000,000 plastic water bottles end up in landfills each year where they take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to decompose. Producing bottled water also requires 2000 times the energy it takes to provide tap water and it takes THREE TIMES the amount of water in the final product to produce the bottle itself!

This deal makes no sense. Shouldn’t the parks encourage eco-friendly alternatives to plastic water bottles? Pushing people to buy plastic will only lead to more trash in the parks… THIS IS SO STUPID.

What can you do?

CALL: CPD Superintendent at (312) 742-7529

EMAIL: CPD Inspector General  InspectorGeneral@chicagoparkdistrict.com

SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter and Instagram @ChicagoParks

SUGGESTED SCRIPT:

I oppose the Dasani deal. We do not need to encourage plastic water bottle use in our parks, in our city, or anywhere! #plasticsucks #sustainablechicago