As more and more reports brand-ironed with giant red letters reading ‘WARNING! PLANET BECOMING TOO HOT TO HANDLE!’ go sorely ignored, we find ourselves capitulating between ‘bah, it’s still nonsense’ and ‘this might actually be the next bitcoin’ at the idea of one day purchasing pre-packaged oxygen like we do bottles of Dasani. While the prospect of having to put on a gas mask and swap out your canister of mealy morning breath with a fresh bottle of Amazonian atmosphere from Coca Cola (because let’s face it, they’ll definitely dip into the market) is still a touch too phildickian for some, it may still be worth examining how a polar world - that is to say, a world at total odds with the ruinous hellscape illustrated in the scenario above - would ideally be treating water as a commodity.

In an eco-friendly future, bottled water - or, at least, bottled water as we know it now - will no longer exist. In June, American actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness company announced that the water brand ‘Flow’ - a small one-man startup located two and a half hours northwest of Toronto, near Lake Huron - would be her company’s water partner for the following year. Paltrow, in a broadcast following the release of the news, stated that “Flow is changing the game with a spring water that is naturally alkaline—nothing added—in 100% recyclable packaging. The pack is made from sustainably sourced fibers and even has a plant-based cap crafted from sugarcane.” Flow sources its bottles from the company Tetra Pak, which creates cartons, containers, and various other packages for manufacturers that look for alternatives to plastic.

50% of all plastic in the ocean are single-use products that are used for just minutes or hours and frivolously discarded. In an idyllic eco-friendly future, plastic bottles and other such single-use plastic products will have been totally eliminated in favor of sustainable substitutes. Although some cite a total reversion to tap water as the only solution to the plastic bottles crisis, replacing plastic containers with recyclable, renewable alternatives will perhaps be a more viable prediction for the near future.

In 2019, PepsiCo announced that its water brand Aquafina would now begin selective launches in cans. While only 8% of all plastic produced is ever recycled, over 75% of all aluminum produced in the U.S. are still in circulation today. In the future, such corporate-scale changes in commodities to renewable, more easily recyclable materials will ideally have taken place.

In striving for a green future, we sometimes feel like our day-to-day efforts - switching to the subway, bringing a tote for shopping, taking a tumbler to Starbucks for our fifth coffee of the day - are senselessly small in comparison to the gross scale of waste and pollution that corporate giants bulldoze the environment with. However, it is always important to remind ourselves that being conscious of a greener, better life is the biggest contribution to the environment that we could possibly hope to make. Here’s to a greener future!