Bottled water fills half an aisle in Stop & Shop.

Bottled water fills half an aisle in Stop & Shop.

If Falmouth Town Meeting votes to repeal the plastic water ban, Sustainable Practices LTD based in Brewster will likely file another plastic water bottle ban bylaw.

The company has re-filed bans in towns that have repealed them, said founder and executive director Madhavi Venkatesan.

Robert P. Volosevich of Falmouth has started a petition which he plans to file as an article to repeal the town’s plastic water bottle ban. He argued that the ban is inconvenient and causes expense for people who opt to buy more expensive, single-use bottle beverages when they cannot find water.

The ban initially passed in Town Meeting in fall 2020 and was backed by Sustainable Practices. It went into effect on September 1, 2021. Dr. Venkatesan said that the company initially passed municipal bans in all 15 towns on Cape Cod and 11 towns passed a commercial ban. Since then, three towns, including Mashpee and Sandwich, rescinded the commercial bans. She said that her company is persistent and will re-file the initiative in those towns.

Dr. Venkatesan said that the issue is not convenience, and that the cost is greater for bottled water than tap water.

“The person who is talking about the ban doesn’t understand the issue,” Dr. Venkatesan said. “You pay 100 times more at a minimum.”

The water for single-use plastic bottles comes from municipal sources, she said. The price people pay in a grocery store for a water bottle does not actually represent the cost of the water. She added that the bottles can never be recycled forever, that even if a bottle is recycled once or twice, it will eventually end up in clothes and construction materials. Meanwhile, more bottles are being made all the time.

Dr. Venkatesan added that greenhouse gas emission is a huge part of the reason why her company started with the plastic water bottle ban. Plastic emissions could exceed coal emissions as early as 2030, she said.

“Why would we continue to support something that we know is harming the speed of climate change?” Dr. Venkatesan said. “And we still haven’t talked about the consumption.”

Dr. Venkatesan said that thin plastics, like the single-use water bottles, leach chemicals into food and water, chemicals that are tied to autoimmune and cardiovascular disease, among other health problems.

“They (health problems) have been normalized, and we don’t think twice about it,” Dr. Venkatesan said. “But we should.”

The now-commonplace product did not even exist 40 years ago, she said. Marketing and a pro-business economy made the way for a bottle that has quick and disposable use built into it. Dr. Venkatesan is a professor of economics at Northwestern University.

“People think if it’s on the shelf that it’s okay to use,” Dr. Venkatesan said. “This is not a precautionary economy. We’re looking to maximize business.”

She emphasized that the negative health, economy, and overall high price of the water bottle is too steep, which she said Sustainable Practice’s initial ban hoped to educate the public about.

“How can you justify a few minutes of convenience for the long-lasting impact on the planet?” Dr. Vanekatesan said.

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