»On water and corn

A bottle of Biota Spring Water advertises that the bottle is biodegradeable. In fact, the bottle is "made from a 100% renewable resource, corn".
Although corn is renewable, that fact does not endorse our approach: that we should renew corn corps in the way that we do. Since the 70s the United States has contributed to a national surplus of corn without increasing the world's ability to feed its population, and has increased the corn supply specifically for the benefit of few. Many of the corn products we see and consume in our everyday chores are a direct result of the gross corn surplus: the necessity to consume the surplus became the mother of invention.
In this case, the invention is the bottle:

NatureWork ™PLA uses 30% to 50% less fossil fuel to produce than petroleum-based plastics.

Although it decomposes naturally, the bottle still requires energy to produce, and from a source that we renew at great expense to the American taxpayer: $5 to $20 billions annually.

Other by-products of the corn surplus include high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS, chemically guided to taste exactly like naturally-occurring sugars); corn-fed beef, and accordingly lower beef prices (and quality); and, perhaps most damning of all, monocultural agribusiness which encourages the industrialization of all aspects of the food chain, at the expense of agricultural diversity and of environmental stewardship.