Gretchen Bleiler joins Aspen’s campaign to replace plastic water bottles with reusable water bottles
In an effort to cut down the local use of single serving plastic bottles, the city of Aspen, is considering a programme to market its own municipal tap water. The campaign has been recently joined by the Aspen local professional snowboarder, Gretchen Bleiler,
who is keen to make some sort of contribution to the cause.
The Olympic Snowboard gold medallist opposed the usage of bottled water in environmentally unfriendly containers, saying there is no real need of single serving plastic water bottles in America. She added that most of these bottles are not even recycled
and not only end up overflowing the landfills, but also pollute the waterways and lands. According to her, the municipal tap water is a much better option than the bottled water in most of the areas. She further added that going for a reusable bottle and getting
it topped up at the sinks is a much more reasonable as it is environment-friendly and also relatively less expensive.
"Aspen tap water is great," Bleiler said. "And most bottled water is tap water just shipped from across the country in toxic plastic bottles, wasting more energy and burning more fuel."
The programme that is being considered by the city of Aspen will not place an outright ban on the single serving plastic water bottles, but would encourage people to switch to reusable bottles. The programme will involve a three-step approach. In the first
step, it will educate the locals and tourists about the quality of Aspen’s tap water. In the second step, it will encourage people to switch to reusable bottles by providing free water at two filling stations, with one most probably located in a park. In the
last step, the city will try to diminish the use of plastic water bottles by selling an alternative in the form of reusable containers at local retail outlets. It goes with saying that the steps will not be taken in any particular order.
The 29-year-old Bleiler appreciated Aspen’s initiative, saying, “I think [it] is a great step in the right direction and that starting with education and promoting our own municipal water is smart. Obviously, I hope that this first step leads to better and
greater initiatives in the future, too.”
Advocating the cutting down of plastic water bottles is nothing new for Bleiler. She, along with her in-laws, has been involved in the manufacturing and marketing of the reusable water bottle, ALEX. ALEX stands for “Always Live Extraordinarily.” The snowboarding
pro explained that in order to move the people away from plastic water bottles, they have introduced a bottle that is not only easy to travel with, but is also quite easy to clean. She was extremely pleased with Aspen’s initiative and feels fortunate to live
in a place where her concern for the environment is shared by the community.
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