If you drink bottled water, please drink responsibly by recycling your water bottles

PET (polyethylene terephthalate) water bottles are made from natural gas and petroleum byproducts. Like water, natural gas and petroleum are natural resources in limited supply. There's a lot of griping about the fact that most PET water bottles wind up in the trash piles. But with all the griping, the solution is simple... recycle.

For several years, each Monday morning I have taken the recycling bin out to the curb in my front yard. And every empty water bottle from our home is in that bin, along with the empty milk cartons, soda bottles, paper, and other products we recycle.

However, for most people, their empty water bottles wind up in the trash instead of recycling bins. If you want to help conserve natural resources and prevent waste, part of the solution is to recycle your empty water bottles. If your community offers a curbside recycling program you need to actively participate. If your community doesn't offer curbside recycling, consider contacting your city council.

Recycling companies can clean the bottles and chop them into small chips. Then, they're heated and turned into tiny white pellets of recycled PET, which competes on the marketplace with virgin PET. Foreign countries, like the Chinese, recognize the value of this recycled product and are coming to the U.S. to buy more than 30% of the bottles Americans recycle.

Recycled PET water bottles are used in all types of products, such as carpet, clothing, new water bottles, and much more.

But the convenience of bottled water allows us to drink it away from home, usually at a park, in an office or even while driving; areas where there's usually no recycling.

The opportunities for recycling outside the home are minimal. However, some states have enacted laws to help solve the problem. Recycling reached an all-time high in California after enacting a deposit law. In Hawaii, consumers pay a nickel deposit for each aluminum, glass, or plastic drink containers.

For more information on recycling, and the recycling programs in several of the states, you may find the following MSNBC and NPR articles interesting:

For Empty Water Bottles, There's an Afterlife

Hawaii tags nickel deposits onto bottles

Plastic bottles pile up as mountains of waste