The worst thing was asking for water and getting soda. Apparently, in many European countries, they assume that when people want water, what they really want is soda, because… it’s usually too.
Bottled water is mostly a convenience for the unprepared or an instrument to increase profit in captured markets such as movie theatres, sports venues, airports, and similar. I very rarely put myself in a situation where it becomes necessary to purchase water. I habitually carry a re-usable water bottle. It cost $10, has a wide mouth opening, is easy to clean, is quite durable, and easily handles getting tossed in a freezer for a few hours.
As for your ballparks, the only ones I’ve visited that sell beer have very strict policies about bringing in outside food or beverages. Obviously these magical, not at all franchised ballparks are not in Detroit. I can’t say I recall seeing a single water fountain at Commerica. Not sure there are any at Joe Lewis, either, for that matter (no baseball played there, I’ve simply more familiar with the facility).
And to answer your last question, it’s the incredible mark-up and utter waste of resources that makes bottled water an easy target to malign.
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@waetherman
You’re pretty accurate until “Step forward 25 years…” where you go way off track. If your hypothesis was correct, you would assume the bottled water industry would have experienced decline as access to clean piped drinking water improved, it didn’t. The exact opposite happened. This isn’t about industry “geared to geared towards fixing a problem that largely doesn’t exist anymore”. It is about an industry that has knowingly and deliberately created a market that largely didn’t exist, one where the profits are astronomical, and the real costs are massive negative externalities which the companies don’t pay.
I agree we need to fix infrastructure though. Bring back public drinking fountains. Regulate that all bars/restaurants/cafes/diners etc serve free drinking water (fuck this let them charge what they will bullshit).
@Chesterfield
There are lots of things that exist because they are convenient. What is it about bottled water that makes people unable to see that?
I understand why someone might buy a bottle of water from a service station on a long drive, but the bottled water industry relies on much more than that. I’ve worked in offices where my colleagues would buy 3 bottles a day just to drink at their desks! (and I live in a city that has exceptionally clean and palatable drinking water). They would make claims like “I need it for the train home” like they might die of dehydration on their 25 minute commute and the two empty bottles in their rubbish bins under their desks would split apart if refilled, rather than take a millennium to bio-degrade. I know my colleagues are not alone, and are good people.
Marketers have created this industry, and they deserve to be condemned for the damage it is doing to our planet.
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You can buy home filtration systems for less than the accumulated cost of a year of bottled water. Not that everyone can afford that, but if it’s like you say, it’s well worth the investment for those who can.
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Lead is not absorbed through the skin and generally it’s low exposure to particulate and lead dust over long periods of time that creates illness. Lead in paint is particularly bad to remove without protection because it forms a lot of dust and particulates that enter the bloodstream, but lead pipe doesn’t have that problem, and metallic lead is not absorbed through skin. People who solder copper wires all day might get more lead exposure from soldering fumes than people who remove lead pipes all day, provided one is doing things right and the other is doing things wrong.
Ventilation people, yeah you hobbyists, you too.
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Here’s a bit from Rick Steves’ (maybe it’s Rick Steves’s) forum on ordering water.
Hear, hear!
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
No, I think we’re on the same page. It’s our reliance on bottled water and our willingness for that to become an industry that made us complacent when what infrastructure we had (but rightly never trusted) began to deteriorate. Now we’ve created financial incentives for retail to push bottled water, defunded and deprioritized municipal drinking water programs, and allowed private industry to take over this essential service.
I’m not interstd in assigning blame, especially since I don’t think bottled water is inherently evil. I am interested in evolving our understanding of the problems created by bottled water and seeing what we can do to solve the problems. For instance, what if in addition to mandating retail water filling stations, we developed a water filling station that could fit on top of fire hydrants? Then every city could be like Rome with its freely flowing municipal fountains. Maybe it’s not realistic because of the pressures involved, or maintenance issues, but that’s the kind of thinking we need to do to solve this issue.
Edit: ooh, just found this
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What I dislike is when people shame me for carrying a bottled-water bottle. Apparently the bottle itself carries bad karma, and isn’t redeemed by the fact that I’ve been carrying the same one for months and refilling it from the tap (or filtering from outdoor sources, if I’m backpacking).
I replace it whenever I fly. I’ve found that the TSA goons invariably confiscate my water bottle, even if it’s empty: “you could just refill it on the other side of the checkpoint, and then you’d have a forbidden amount of liquid!” So I buy a new bottle in the terminal. It even comes with water.
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I have this superstition (I guess) about drinking the tap water in New Jersey. I also didn’t drink it in New Orleans.
the profits are astronomical
Is that supposed to be bad? If anything, it highlights the value people place on convenience and underscores just how out of touch people around here are. Anytime a story about K-cup coffee comes up, it’s very predictable that the chorus here will repeat the obvious - it’s over packaged, very expensive, terrible coffee. They are right. But it isn’t about the coffee, it’s the convenience. That’s so valuable, people will drink crappy, expensive coffee.
the real costs are massive negative externalities which the companies don’t pay
That’s a real problem, but it’s hardly specific to bottled water. Packaging in general is a problem. Almost everything in a store is in packaging that is destined for the landfill. Water bottles are at least made out of plastic that can be recycled.
my colleagues would buy 3 bottles a day just to drink at their desks
Would you be less offended if they were downing 3 bottles of Coca Cola every day? Coke is almost entirely water and generally has packaging with even more plastic in it (because the drink is pressurized).
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If the office had a soda tap that provided the same soda right into an office provided container, like my last office did?
Yes, I would be offended.
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Are you at risk of sudden dehydration?
Soda from a tap never tastes the same as bottled soda, so that might be a bad example. Plus, nothing at my office gets properly cleaned.
Is there such a thing as sudden dehydration?
I keep bottled water in my office but I also use an aluminum Kleen Kanteen. They are my favorite reusable bottle because they don’t leak and last for 4-6 months. Plus, they look pretty good.
I hope not. Maybe if you fall in to a pit of calcium chloride while eating pretzels… that could get ugly.
it highlights the value people place on convenience
No, it highlights the power of marketing. Is ‘Fiji’ water or any other brand of “premium” water shipped from one side of the world to the other any more convenient than bottled municipal water? No? Then why the premium price?
Would you be less offended if they were downing 3 bottles of Coca Cola every day
I’d be horrified for different reasons, but at least they’d purchasing something that wasn’t coming out of the tap down the hall at none of the costs, with none of the externalities and with the added benefits of fluoride and stricter cleanliness controls.
As I’ve been saying, the industry isn’t about convenience: you’d need to be completely out of touch to believe it was.
aluminum Kleen Kanteen.
Kleen Kanteen don’t make aluminium bottles, their whole “mission statement” was to create a plastic free, unlined bottle; i.e. unlined stainless steel.
last for 4-6 months
What the hell are you doing with them that they don’t last years?
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Not sure what you’re doing with them, but as long as you don’t mind bumps and scrapes, the Kleen Kanteens will last forever.
Now I am totally confused! Ours look like they’ve been run over a few times by a Humvee, but have been used daily for at least 5 years by multiple family members with absolutely no use defects. How are you getting the exact opposite result?
Not sure what you’re doing with them, but as long as you don’t mind bumps and scrapes, the Kleen Kanteens will last forever.
I’ve had the plastic stoppers crack and the rubber gasket break down. Usually though it’s general scrapes and dents. I’ve found the paint scrapes off very easily.
They aren’t very expensive, so it’s not a big deal to get a new one when the bottle starts to look beat up.
