The evils of bottled water: it’s not the ‘tap water’ that’s a problem
Posted on August 6, 2007 in These Things Keep Me Up at Night by DM
My family and I have long joked about how the bottled water display in the grocery store is probably hooked up to a regular old tap water faucet, and Aquafina’s recent announcement suggests that we might be on target.
So you can probably imagine a little of what was going through my mind when I read a teaser for an article at msnbc.com about “the evils of bottled water.” I clicked through, and was surprised to learn that the “evil” was not that the product is actually filtered tap water… but rather “environmental unfriendliness.”
Huh?? Water is environmentally unfriendly?
Well, here are columnist Arthur Caplan’s concerns: bottled water is bottled in plastic, which takes petroleum to make, or in glass which “becomes heavy” to ship when full, which adds to the shipping cost. And, it’s shipped by vehicles that run on petroleum-based fuel.
Now, nevermind that the above describes literally thousands of products in the world around you. Bottled water, according to Caplan, is the litmus test for just how committed you are to saving the environment. In his words:
“…it’s time for those of us who care about the environment and are concerned about global warming to stop buying and drinking bottled water.”
Implication, especially given the full context of the article in which this statement is made? If you are an environmentalist and you drink bottled water, you are a hypocrite.
I abhor people telling me how to live my life, and many environmentalists seem to be hell-bent on doing just that: telling me which cars to drive (hybrids), which chickens to eat (free-range), which light-bulbs to use (the ones that require a HAZ-MAT team to remove the poisonous mercury that gets released when they break), how many squares of toilet paper to use (Sheryl Crow), and which live-giving substance to ban.
And, frankly, I do not see this country’s most visible environmentalists doing much of anything to make a dent in the problems they espouse, so I have little patience for environmental evangelism on the whole. So until I see Al Gore commuting from speech to speech in a vegetable oil-powered camper, I’m content to put my faith in people who truly make significant changes in their lifestyle to learn whether various strategies actually make a difference. Those are the people who can talk to me about environmentalism.
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There was a group of environmentalists I felt sorry for this weekend: on Sunday, with temperatures nearing 100 degrees, a group of young people marched down 2nd Avenue with a police escort, carrying signs that read, “Stop global warming.” While my husband groused about having to wait for them to clear the intersection, I pointed out that at least they did not let the heat put a dent in their plans. It would have been easy to just stay home in the air conditioning and say, “It’s too hot for a ’stop global warming’ walk.”
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Updated 8/29: I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Comments
4 comments to “The evils of bottled water: it’s not the ‘tap water’ that’s a problem”
Add your comments here!
Here, I’ll sum up your post for you:
“Since the problem (plastic packaging) is much larger than just this one product, there’s nothing we can do about it. Also, I follow the ‘monkey see monkey do’ policy and I don’t see any monkeys doing.”
Thanks for the valiant effort.
Mdb, I do appreciate your comment, but your summary isn’t accurate. I certainly did NOT say there’s nothing we can do about it. I suggested that checking whether a person drinks bottled water is a dumb test for whether they’re an environmentalist.
As far as “no monkeys doing,” well yeah, I DO care what the most vocal activists are saying vs. what they’re doing, and others should care too. Those folks have the means to espouse their views – views that they would very much like to impose on the rest of us – and the attention of the nation. And yet they are just as accustomed to and unwilling to give up this rich petroleum-based life as the average skeptical citizen. They should start leading by example.
[...] I see the Register finally caught up with the Arthur Caplan column I quoted from back in early August… [...]
[...] Like Michael, I plan to start hoarding incandescent lightbulbs. Who the hell is running this show, anyway?? Oh wait, that’s right, the holier-than-thou environmentalists. [...]