Bottled water: the ultimate throwback to feudal selfishness

I recently participated in a charity fundraiser walk. Our welcome packages and lunches included . . . bottled water.

I suppose this saved the trouble of doling out cups of water, but still, a lot of those bottles went to “waste” in that they were left behind when the event wrapped.

I took them to work and stuck them in the drinks fridge.

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The places I’ve spent most of my life, New York City and Vancouver, both have excellent tap water. There is absolutely no reason to drink water that doesn’t come from a tap in those places.

I also spent 4 years in Houston doing my undergrad. When I turned on the tap, I was often greeted with a waft of sulfur. I sometimes smelled worse after my shower than before (apparently, the sulfur is naturally occurring and has nothing to do with nearby chemical plants). I can forgive people in Houston who prefer not to drink tap water. But still, the answer should be better filtration and not bottles.

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Huh - I’ve been informed by some people that I guess their tap water tastes like ass.

I do remember in Europe, like 15 years ago, you had to ask for tap water. They assumed if you ordered water it was bottled water.

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This is still a thing.
Partly because of history, partly because a lot of countries (Luxemborg comes to mind) have terrible water/no water treatment, and partly because bottled water (natural spring or otherwise) is easier to transport to said countries with terrible water.

Bottled water… Good to have if you have no good source of clean/treated water. This is an issue even in some modern industrialized cities as wednagreb pointed out.

Edit: That is not to discount the nose in the air pinkie out mentality. That is most definitely a thing. Shit… some places even have water sommeliers… I shit you not.

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@bonetithed - Sure, bottled water is a necessity in certain places. If I ever travel to South East Asia I’ll undoubtedly end up drinking it constantly as my stomach-raised-in-a-western-metropolis will inevitably decide it wants to refuse all food and water for three days if I try to drink the tap water. At an individual level the choice here is obvious, drink bottled water.

But at a societal and governmental level that’s a very short term solution. All that bottled water being consumed in places where the tap water is undrinkable only makes pollution worse, and the tap water even less drinkable. The solution must be to start cleaning up the tap water and phasing out bottled water.

If I was more of an entrepreneur and had the know how, I’d start a bottled water company that’s only goal was to put itself (and its competitors) out of business, by putting all profits towards creating cleaner public water supplies.

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Brain : “I shall pollute the water supply with this DNAdefibuliser, turning everyone into mindless slaves.”
Pinky : “What about the people who drink bottled water?”
Brain : “Pinky, people who pay 5 dollars for a bottle of water are already mindless slaves.”

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Really? Luxembourg has the second highest GDP (PPP) in the world, yet nobody can afford to build a water treatment plant?

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Agreed on all points. Of note though is that the large majority of bottled water here is sold in glass bottles that are heavily recycled. I think the deposit on most of them is like 75cent. There is much less (albeit some) plastic waste and such by comparison. But yes pollution from lots of vectors other than bottle waste obviously.

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Yes really. Luxemborg has many systemic issues and strange taxation stuff going on… It is a really interesting country sociologically speaking.

Edit: Also keep in mind Luxemborg is incredibly small (less than 3000km2) and has basically rolled the dice by basing the vast majority of their economy on finance… Which is causing its own problems.

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It’s a bit like Dubai. It looks like a shimmering example of wealth and prosperity from the outside, but then you find out the sewage system basically consists of people pumping out gallons of human waste from storage tanks in the basements of all those fancy skyscrapers and trucking it out to the desert.

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Ah, so Luxembourg is basically the end game of Libertarian political philosophy. Everyone is rich, but everyone has to pay top dollar for stupidly basic things individually, rather than paying very small amounts collectively.

Because apparently a little taxation is “economically hobbling the job creators” while paying $12 a bottle for water is just sound business.

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You keep saying things that make it sound like the project of giving everyone extremely cheap, clean, fluoridated water would be easier there.

Contractor: “The Johnson’s house is tiny, just 70m2, and it’s just the mister and missus. Also, they’re incredibly rich.”

Plumber: “Dammit! This project is totally insurmountable! It’ll never get done, even though I’d only have to use 1/10 the time, materials and effort to get it done compared with a normal sized house!”

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IGNORITE!? :slight_smile:

But you’ve gotta give that money to the financial sector to keep your economy going.

“F’ infrastructure.”

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Where I live the tap water is undrinkable. The water company here chose to invest in a megalomaniac Skyscraper in stead of improving the water quality. (Torre Agbar) The outlets on my shower head turn black because of some black sticky residue building up. I even use bottled water for my espresso. It’s a shame.

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Cheapest gas in Europe. Most expensive rent (I’m fairly certain), most expensive water, most expensive food, etc.

Take note America. You’ve been beaten to Libertarian Paradise.

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Nice article. But oh christ, that comment section.

The misogyny, the fluoride FUD spreading, the partisan comments, the nuts, the vitriol.

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It’s not that they assume you ask for bottle water, it’s that (specially in touristic zones) they expect to make an additional profit.

Always ask for a glass of water. :wink:

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I think it’s easy to condemn bottled water without appreciating the historical (or present) conditions that led people to rely on it; clean, safe water supply hasn’t always been a given in the U.S. and still isn’t in other parts of the world, where water treatment plants are few and tap water literally comes out of the rivers where industrial and human waste is dumped.

If we are talking about the U.S., we have to look at the water quality during the 70s and 80s which gave rise to the bottled water industry here. Drinking water was in bad shape, especially before the Clean Drinking Water Act of '74 and the increased standards that took effect a decade later and probably took another decade to promulgate. During that time there was also a heightened awareness of pollution and the effect on drinking water and health. And in the retail environment that prevailed in the 70s and 80s, the only options for quenching thirst were buying coffee or soda. So of course bottled water was viewed as both a safer and healthier option at the time, and rightly so.

Step forward 25 years and now we have an industry that is geared towards fixing a problem that largely doesn’t exist anymore. So yes, it’s time to fix that. But we aren’t going to do it with shame alone or with boycotts, because the financial power is with those who sell bottled water, not with the people who give water away for free or sell reusable water bottles. To counteract this we need to encourage the development of infrastructure geared towards fixing the current problem, which is bottled water. Every restaurant has to provide water on request already (at least in NYC - don’t know how other municipalities handle it) so why not say that every food retail store also has to provide a place to fill a water bottle? Let them charge what they will, provide filtered or unfiltered tap as they will, but require that filling station at a minimum. That’s far more likely to solve the problem than just saying the problem of access to clean water doesn’t exist anymore and that we should all just lug our own bottles and fill them in the bathroom at Starbucks.

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I’m afraid that’s a pipe dream.

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My wife drinks only bottled spring water. Although at least she buys it by the gallon jug.

If it were not for the fact that she can identify our tap water (even when filtered) when compared to bottled in a blind taste test - every single time - I’d be more inclined to argue with her about it.

But not for any ideological reason, just because I’m pretty tight with a buck.

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