Bottled water

June 9, 2008

I like water. I like cold water. I like it over ice. I like in a glass. I like it in a bottle. I CANNOT stand it out of the tap!

There is a major controversy going on now about bottled water. Here ‘we’ are, moaning and groaning about the price of gas hovering around $4 a gallon and we are chugging down bottles of water that at the least is priced at .89 cents and at the most $1.89 for a 20 ounce bottle of the clear liquid. ‘Tap’ water costs us about .0001 cent to drink. So what is the big deal? Why don’t we drink tap water and forego the bottled water that used to only be a thing the rich and infamous was known for?

From the West Coast to the East Coast to across the pond to Europe, city governments, high-class restaurants, schools, and religious groups are ditching bottled water in favor of what comes out of the faucet. With people no longer content to pay 1,000 times as much for bottled water, a product no better than water from the tap, a backlash against bottled water is growing.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, which represents some 1,100 American cities, discussed at its June 2007 meeting the irony of purchasing bottled water for city employees and for city functions while at the same time plugging their quality municipal water. The group passed a resolution sponsored by Mayors Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City, and R. T. Rybak of Minneapolis that called for the examination of bottled water’s environmental impact. The resolution noted that with $43 billion a year going to provide clean drinking water in cities across the country, “the United States’ municipal water systems are among the finest in the world.”

Tap water promotional campaigns would have seemed a bit over the top back when water in bottles was a rarity. Now cities are trying to counteract the pervasive marketing that has caused consumers to lose faith in the faucet. In fact, more than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water, including top-selling Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani. When Pepsi announced in July that it would clearly label its Aquafina water as from a “public water source,” it no doubt shocked everyone who believed that bottles with labels depicting pristine mountains or glaciers delivered a superior product. I didn’t like Aquafina because it tasted funny. Now we know why. Tap water!

Americans on average each now drink about 30 gallons of bottled water a year with sales growing by 10 percent each year, far faster than any other beverage. Bottled water now appears to be the drink of choice for many Americans—they swallow more of it than milk, juice, beer, coffee, or tea. Yep that’s right, Americans drink more water than beer or tea.

Now I don’t know about ya’ll but I drink bottled water and I read the labels and check it out to see if it’s from a municipal water supply. I also recycle my bottles about 75 percent of the time. There are large recycling bins on highway 7 going into Oxford and every so often I load up the plastic garbage bags filled with plastic bottles and I drop them in the recycling bin that is labeled for plastic.

I would drink tap water except for one reason. It tastes nasty. When I was a kid, Bruce water tasted so good. That old water tank on North Newberger across from my grandparent’s house held some of the best tasting artesian water. Then somewhere along the line, chemicals started to be added to the water. A little Fluoride and a lot of Chlorine started being added to it. There is nothing worse than drinking chlorinated water and what ever else is put into it. I go into a restaurant and ask for tea and all I can taste is the chlorine. If I wanted to drink chlorine I would go jump in a swimming pool and take a few gulps. We have old water pipes in houses and coming off of the streets into our homes and those old pipes are lead. Now think about it. Chlorinated water going through old lead pipes into your homes. Yum. I have let my ice cubes melt before and then noticed flotsam in the bottom of my glass of ‘pure’ tap water. Nothing like getting a little extra fiber in your diet, is there?

I can’t count the number of times that I have ruined a load of white clothes in the wash because of something wrong with the water. I am certainly not going to drink something that comes out of the tap that is already the color of weak tea.

When I first moved into my house in 2001 we had a whole house water filter. It was in the ground on the house side of the water meter. Until 2004 we had some very good charcoal filtered water, until the day when city workers replaced my meter and completely destroyed the filter. Oops! My pipes are still spitting out charcoal after all these years of replacing faucets and other things that were ruined and I haven’t replaced the filter because it is too cost prohibitive now. The city didn’t offer to replace it for me either.

I will continue to drink bottled water and I’ll recycle the plastic bottles. It won’t matter where I live or go to eat or work, if the water doesn’t smell like water should and smells like an overly chlorinated swimming pool, I will go and purchase a bottle of water. That U.S. Conference of Mayors doesn’t represent me and I doubt any of our mayors ever attended one. I will say this, if you think your water is clean, come borrow one of my microscopes and look at a drop of your tap water. I’ll be standing right beside you and offer you a swig from a bottle of Brand X triple reverse osmosis filtered water. Bon Appetite!