Take Back The Filter campaign urges Clorox to recycle used Brita filters

Do you use Brita water filters to purify your tap water or know someone who does? Have you ever wondered what happens to all the used plastic filter cartridges at the end of their lives?

If you lived in Europe, you could take that filter to a drop-off location where it would be sent back to original German Brita company for recycling.

Unfortunately, in North America, Brita is owned by The Clorox Company, which has not provided any options for recycling Brita cartridges at all. Each plastic cartridge is either landfilled or incinerated, adding to the toxic waste that is already choking our planet.

A few months ago, I and a group of other enthusiastic bloggers created the Take Back The Filter campaign (www.takebackthefilter.org) to urge The Clorox Company to redesign their filters and provide a way for us to recycle them, as is done in Europe. We've already collected nearly 16,000 signatures and over 420 used Brita filters.

Please help us reach our goal of 20,000 petition signatures and 1,000 used filters!

Here's how you can help:

* Sign the Petition
* Send in your used filter cartridges
* Spread the word, through email, blog posts, forum posts, etc.
* Read more about the issue or continue reading below for a few facts about the campaign in a nutshell:

1) The original Brita company in Germany has had a program to collect and recycle used filter cartridges ever since 1992. They process them in their own facility, separating the materials and recycling or reusing them. In fact, they recycle every part of the cartridge, including the filtering material inside!

2) The North American branch of the company was sold to Clorox in 2000. Clorox has not provided any way to recycle these used cartridges.

3) Clorox and Nalgene have teamed up for their FilterForGood campaign to encourage people to give up bottled water and opt instead for the combo of reusable bottle and Brita filter, to cut down the amount of plastic bottle waste. This is a great effort. But Clorox has not addressed the plastic waste from the water filters themselves, as the Brita company has done in Europe.

4) We would like Clorox to follow the principal of Extended Producer Responsibility and either redesign its filter cartridges to be refilled (the best option) or create a take-back recycling program, such as already exists in Europe.

5) Why Brita and not other water filter companies? We are starting with Brita because the technology for recycling already exists in Europe, Brita is the most popular water filter system in the U.S., and Clorox is making a bid for the green consumer at this time with its purchase of Burt's Bees and its development of Green Works cleaning products.

Please help us help Clorox "walk their talk!"