The Layman's blog: "The Layman's World"

I watched the documentary, “Water Wars,” today.  Watching it will make your body begin to physically reject bottled water.  If it doesn’t change your mind, then I don’t know what will.  I really have only one principled stance in my life, and it is that I will not support the bottled water industry.  Not only will I not buy it, I will not drink it.  I felt this way, before I watched that movie, by the way.  But, the movie wrapped up all of the reasons that bottled water if for suckers into a nice, little package, and wrapped it in a big o'l’ bow.  To sum it up:

1) Bottled water is a million times more expensive than water from the tap.  Yes, “a million” is hyperbole, but the point remains.

2) Tap water is potable and safe.  Yes, there are contaminants and particulate matter that make it into the water supply, but something like 60% of the people on the planet would still kill for your tap water.  If there is a health benefit to drinking bottled water vs. tap, it is negligible.  In fact, if you check the labels on most of the bottles (Aquafina and Dasani, to name two), you’ll find that they come from municipal water sources, anyway.  So, you’re paying all that extra money for filtered tap water.

3) Tap water quality is regulated by the EPA and has an expanse of regulations and standards to ensure its quality.  Bottled water is regulated by the FDA, and has FAR fewer regulations and standards to ensure its quality.  So, not only is bottled water not any better, but it doesn’t even have to be as good.  And did I mention that it’s about a million times more expensive. . ?

4) With bottling, manufacture of bottles, shipping, and all of the other associated costs, bottled water production is a huge contributor to fossil fuel consumption.  And what about all those plastic bottles?  What happens to them?  Drinking bottled water is much worse on the environment than drinking from the tap.

You can add on top of all that the shortages of potable water in many developing nations due to corporate ownership of water rights or corporate use of free local water sources.  Thanks to the Coca Cola Company, a bottle of potable water (Dasani) in Kenya costs a little more than twice as much as a bottle of actual Coca Cola.  They can do that, because safe water is scarce enough in Kenya that the locals are willing to pay that much for it.  Remember that Dasani is made from filtering and treating water from the local supply.  They are sucking up the local water and reselling it with a huge markup.  This is true of Dasani, everywhere. 

Anyway, buy a Brita or Pur water filter.  Put it on your faucet.  Drink that stuff.  Put the rest of the money in a savings account or, if you’re an activist, donate it to a clean-water charity. 

That’s my two cents.