Waterlogged

[acmavm]

Sparkling or still? Spring or tap? Imported or domestic? Flavored or plain? There's nothing simple about a drink of water, now that the bottled stuff outsells both milk and beer in the United States. In just a couple of decades, we've become a nation awash in bottled water -- with tens of billions of plastic empties to prove it -- transforming the drinking fountain on a city street into a dated curiosity akin to the public telephone booth.

How one of life's basic necessities became a heavily marketed beverage in a plastic bottle is the subject of Elizabeth Royte's new book "Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It." Royte, an environmental journalist based in Brooklyn, N.Y., shares the many, sometimes bizarre, unintended consequences of cracking open that plastic seal.

<snip>
In your research, what were some of the most decadent bottled waters that you encountered?

There are lots of egregious examples. One of them is Bling water. It's $90 a bottle in clubs or $50 off the shelf. The bottles are covered with Swarovski crystals.

Fiji Water is from Fiji, and it has to cross 5,000 miles of ocean, and then go onto trucks, but since there has been so much negative publicity about that, Fiji has not only gone carbon neutral, but has announced the goal to be carbon negative. They're buying offsets, not only for the energy that they use, but beyond that. But the ships are still coming across the ocean, and the trucks are going around the country.

<snip>

Do you think that there should be a sin tax on bottled water?

It's hard to make a case for singling out bottled water, especially when there's no tax on drinking unhealthy beverages. I don't want to turn people away from drinking water. I just want people to know what the environmental and social toll of everything is and then make a smart decision. I hope that their tap water is great, and they'll stick with that, and get a nice reusable bottle.

How do you drink your tap water?

When I'm home -- I work at home -- I'm just drinking from a nice glass. But when I go out, I always bring a metal bottle with me.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/06/07/bottlemania/print.html

[NNadir]

1. In San Francisco, where tap water comes from the Hetch Hetchy, the mayor banned bottled

water in public facilities.

I covered this point in some remarks on another website: San Francisco Bans Bottled Water for City Staff.

I make it a point to never drink bottled water. It's disgraceful, but pretty typical of yuppie thought.

[XemaSab]

2. Bottle water is SUCH a scam

Get a camelbak. :P