PETCORE COLUMN: No longer thirsty?

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HOME ARCHIV 2003 25.08.2003 PETCORE COLUMN: No longer thirsty?
 

Eight million metric tons of PET pellets are manufactured each year worldwide for making bottles. One and a half million tons of PET bottles (e.g. only 18,75 percent) are "recycled" (acc. EU including energy recovery by incineration!), but only round 400 thousands tons (five percent) are transformed back into bottles!

Perhaps people have always been thirsty.

That is precisely the reason why hunters and gatherers settled only in places where drinking water was readily available. The earliest agricultural civilization was established between two rivers - the Euphrates and the Tigris. When the rains failed and the irrigation channels dried up, that civilization disappeared. We can survive without food for a number of weeks but we must drink each day in order to stay alive.

Archaeologists know that whenever they delve into in the mysteries of our past, the first signs of human civilization are likely to be fragments of pottery. It took a very long time before clay pots were replaced by glass bottles as a means of carrying water, wine, milk, and beer. But glass is equally heavy and it can also break, like pottery.

It is good to have such first-aid solutions, but we must not forget that even today, the number one problem that continues to challenge nations across the world is the lack of potable and sanitary water. Perhaps it is not surprising after all, that we do not have a word in our vocabulary for “not thirsty”.