I have put my foot down. Firmly. I told our Aquafina-swilling son the other day that I was never buying bottled water again. Ever. Why? Because I read an article on MSN the other day that put me in a cantankerous mood. You can start shaking in your boots now.
In our quest to become stupidly obsessed with stupid things, Americans spent 15 BILLION dollars on bottled water last year. We also manage to toss 38 billion plastic bottles into landfills, which completely confounds me because I'm spending half my life putting my diet Coke bottles into plastic bags that will eventually be put into our recycling bin. I thought my plastic was being used to make park benches and swing sets. I think I'm the proverbial sheep with the wool pulled down low over my eyes. No, it's not just a fashion statement.
Back to water . . . I will admit we spent an obscene amount of money on water last year in Italy. We'd been there about two and a half weeks when I read in my travel book that we could ask for tap water, that we didn't have to buy bottled water. Duh. But, most of the bottles were glass, but still. We could have flown home first class if we hadn't bought bottled water.
The article was full of interesting - and completely and utterly irritating - facts. Irritating in that I was forced to clap a hand over my mouth so I wouldn't cuss. Stuff like this: A bottled water plant in Figi turns out a million bottles of water a day, but half the country of Figi doesn't have safe, reliable water. From the article: "The global economy denies the most fundamental element of life to 1 billion people while delivering to us an array of water "varieties" from around the globe, not one of which we actually need." And, in San Francisco, you could drink a bottle of Evian that costs $1.35 and then refill that bottle every day with tap water for ten years, five months and 21 days before it would cost $1.35. Is your jaw dropped? Well, it should be. There are estimates that if we used bottled water for all of our household uses our water bill would be $9,000 a month.
What's wrong with us?
We grew up drinking tap water. Our parents and grandparents and descendants clear back to Moses drank tap water (or River Jordan water). The highly developed brains of lots of people have developed technology that allows us to have the purest water ever with a flip of the wrist, and yet we still think we'll become more highly evolved if we can just pay through the nose for designer water. You know that old joke about "it's in the water." I'll tell you what's in the water. Greed.
2 comments:
yeah... i remember reading about some big rich oil tycoon that actually LEFT the oil business a few years back to hop on the bandwagon of the newest "natural" resource... BOTTLED WATER... smart man, dummie americans... he is more successful with the bottled water business.
um, yeah, evian is naive spelled backwards (thank you 'Reality Bites') .. it just grosses me out.. even moreso than watching the local news. Bottled water doesn't even have the naturals minerals and whatnot that you get from tap water.
i think being so blindly uncompassionate with your money choices is the first step in the downfall of the civilization. money is power, people, make sure you support what you believe in with your buck!
thanks for the insisght. my parents just made the switch as well. just make sure that when you buy a nalgene or a camelback or whatever to put your water in that you check the plastic #. some say higher is better (5,7) and some say only certain numbers are safe (2,5). i guess we should do more research. scientists have found that certain plastics break down faster and the water slowly absorbs the carcinogen. the poor mice who shed light on that issue have their reward in heaven, right?
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