Many thanks to Chris Chambers, whose recent blog post about the tap in Dasani (Coca Cola) and Aquafina (PepsiCo) bottled water (no, it does not come from a spring in paradise, peoples, but from the faucet, from the city reservoir) compelled me to write this:
The July/August issue of Fast Company magazine features an article by Charles Fishman called, “Bottled Water: $15 Billion Down the Drain.” I read it while my husband and I flew to Miami last weekend, and it is stunning. The environmental costs of bottled water are so enormous that refusing to purchase this elemental, free, natural resource in anything plastic might be as important an act as refusing oil and using corn-based ethanol instead to power your car. Really.
In terms of ethics, it is just wrong to pay for fancy water, or plain ol’ tap in a bottle, when, according to the article, “one out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water,” and, unless you’re traveling abroad in an area where the local water is unsafe, bottled water is NOT healthier than tap. In fact, chemicals from the plastic may make it unsafe. Makes me yearn for the glass jug Grandmom always had cooling in the fridge.
“And in Fiji,” according to the article, “a state of the art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the US market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water.” (Pure?) In addition, it costs more to transport Fiji water than it does to extract and bottle it, as it’s shipped, trucked, and warehoused before being trucked again to the store where you buy it. (Fresh?) According to the Charles Fishman article, the Fiji plant runs 24 hours a day, requires an uninterrupted supply of electricity provided by three generators running on diesel fuel since the local utility structure can’t support the plant’s power needs, and “out back of the bottling plant is a less pristine ecosystem veiled with a diesel haze.” (Tasty?)
I stopped buying bottled water when I realized I was paying a premium, $1 for something that is actually free – correction – that my municipal taxes already fund, that gives back no nutritional value. Really.
Drink water at home (6 to 8 a day), and, if you get thirsty when you’re out and about, buy fortified oj in a recyclable glass or carton. Get some magnesium for your money.
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some folks who were the pioneers in pulling cigarette companies to the carpet did a blind test on the street recently. Most folks failed miserably as they could not correctly detect bottled water from tap water.
thanks for saying more about this. people really need to wake up and pay attention to the manipulation.
for those interested, read Age of Manipulation. it talks a lot about how we are daily bombarded with images meant to manipulate our thinking, buying habits, etc. and you know what? most people fall for the trap and do what they are subliminally told.
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Hi Professor!
I took English 320 with you during summer session 1, and I’m just stopping in to say hi! I only had one small comment regarding your last blog; I noticed the new Aquafina commercials that really try to hammer in the message that they filter and purify their water about a million times so that consumers feel like the water in the bottle is better than ordinary tap. Now that the cat is out of the bag I guess they’re going to be defending their product for a while.
I heard that some restaurants in the city (or elsewhere? I saw it on the news…) are refusing to serve bottled water and are instead serving regular chilled tap water. With all this crazy weather (tornado in Brooklyn?!) I think people are finally getting the message: Global warming is real! And the effects will only continue to worsen within our lifetime. It’s scary how much damage humans have done to the environment in such a short amount of time. We’ve existed for about the past… minute?… in the Earth’s lifetime, and yet we’ve been able to do scary things to the environment.
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Get more facts about bottled water quality and its impact on the environment at www.BottledWaterBlues.com