By Gary Dickson
After drinking very little water on a daily basis for most of my life, at the beginning of this year I made a resolution to drink at least one bottle of water daily. I was doing a pretty good job of keeping my promise until I watched a documentary movie with my daughter about the problems caused and the general deception of the public by bottled water producers. Recently, on our Green page, we ran an article that described some of the issues, as well.
W.C. Fields once said, “You can”t trust water: Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.” While we all know what he was talking about, in this case it”s not water we should mistrust, but the companies that have deceptively turned drinking water from a mostly free service to a worldwide $50 to $100 billion annual industry. When you purchase bottled water you pay up to 2,000 times more than you pay for having a drink out of your tap.
When I was growing up, it was rare to see bottled water anywhere and when you did it was the big bottle of the occasional business water cooler. Back then most people didn”t mind using a public drinking fountain to quench their thirst. These days it seems the public drinking fountains have gone missing, just like telephone booths.
In the mid-1970s savvy corporate marketers set out on a campaign to turn the public against drinking tap water. They convinced many that tap water is bad and bottled water is pure and good for us. Environmentalist Annie Leonard calls this “manufactured demand.”
The truth is that much of the bottled water that we pay nearly as much for as we do a soda; is nothing more than filtered tap water. Two of the best selling bottled water brands, Pepsi”s Aquafina and Coca Cola”s Dasani fall into that category. In the 2011 Environmental Working Group”s bottled water scorecard, Aquafina and Dasani both received “D” grades for quality.
It”s no wonder the last couple of decades have become known as the era of corporate deceit. We had Enron, Worldcom, Countrywide and many others play their shell game on a trusting public. Those companies were just following the lead of the bottled water industry that set the example. The industry wasn”t able to turn water into wine, but turned it into money, instead.
There is a long list of reasons why it is not a good idea to drink bottled water. I don”t have space to delve into all of them, but I want to touch upon the major issues. Primarily, as I mentioned, it is not a good value. In this economy most of us need to watch our expenses. No one really has to buy expensive bottled water.
Contrary to what we have been told, bottled water is not healthier than tap water. Actually, our tap water is more highly monitored than bottled water. Municipal water systems are subject to Environmental Protection Agency regulations and inspections. Up to 70 percent of the bottled water that is sold doesn”t cross a state line, so it isn”t even subject to FDA monitoring.
Most drinking water bottles are made out of plastic that is derived from petroleum. There are two major problems with this fact. It causes increased usage of oil and creates something that has to be disposed of after drinking the contents. There are two categories that include too many people; those who don”t recycle plastic bottles and those who don”t even have the decency to put them in a trash container. Last year I wrote about the floating plastic island of trash in the Pacific Ocean.
I still plan to keep my water consumption resolution, but I plan to fill a glass from the faucet. For a more thorough education on this issue watch one of the excellent documentaries on the subject such as “Tapped” or “Thirst.”
Gary Dickson is the publisher of the Record-Bee. Call him at 263-5636, ext. 24. E-mail him at gdickson@record-bee.com.
