PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Academy of Natural Sciences is leading a new campaign to encourage the general public to think twice about single-use plastic water bottles. It’s called Plastic Free Philly, and the goal is to keep plastic bottles out of area rivers.
There may be vast islands of floating garbage in the world’s oceans, but organizers say plastic litter presents a big enough problem at home: Plastic waste accounts for 56% of the trash removed in a single year from a 32-mile stretch of the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers.
The Philadelphia Water Department, one of the partners of the project, is encouraging members of the public to fill their own reusable drinking vessels with tap water instead of buying it in plastic bottles.
“Philadelphia tap water is some of the best tap water in the country. It meets all of the regulations placed upon us on the federal and state levels. It tastes good,” PWD Commissioner and CEO Randy E. Hayman said Wednesday.
There is no reason for people to buy water in plastic bottles, he added.
“The problem is it’s convenient to have a plastic bottle of water,” Hayman said. “But in the end, it ends up on the street, and then it ends up in the inlet, and then it ends up in our rivers and, ultimately, it can end up in our system that we use to clean our water and damage our system. So it’s imperative that we eliminate that problem.”
To inspire second thoughts about those water bottles, 10 art installations made out of recycled plastics have been placed throughout Center City and West Philadelphia.
For one sculpture, called “Waterline,” inside the Academy of Natural Sciences building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, artist Silas McDonough stitched together pieces of plastic to form three large vessels.
“Plastic reduction and plastic waste is something that I personally care a lot about,” McDonough said. “And then my artwork, as a whole, like all of the work I make, it revolves around ideas of nature and how we as people relate to the natural world.”
People can show their support by visiting the Academy of Natural Sciences website to pledge to drink tap water instead of bottled water.