Brita’s “Responsible Water” campaign shows a woman on a treadmill with a disposable water bottle by her side, with the tagline, “30 minutes on the treadmill, forever in a landfill.” The problem is that water filters cannot be recycled.

In some countries in Europe, like France and Germany, consumers can return Brita water filters to the manufacturer for recycling or drop them off in stores. But in the United States, municipal waste systems are not equipped to recycle Brita filters, a situation that Clorox is trying to address, or so says CEO Donald R. Knauss in a letter to TakeBackTheFilter.org, an online campaign to try to persuade Clorox, the company that owns Brita, to start recycling the filters.

The NY Times reports that a Clorox spokesman claims the cost of a nationwide recycling program would be “absolutely astronomical, and there’s no way any one company can afford to do this.” Nonetheless, a test program may begin within the next year that will let people return the filters to retail stores, he said.

Are water filters as big an environmental problem as water bottles? No, says Joe E. Heimlich, a professor of natural resources and environmental science at Ohio State University. “The water filter is a minuscule bit of waste,” he said. “Even if everyone was using them it would be a minor part of what goes in landfills. Bottled water has a much greater ecological footprint.”

Eight million water bottles are trashed daily. Get more facts on recycling and what you can do to help on our Recycling page.