Summary:
Bottled water is the biggest marketing scam perpetrated on the American public in the last several decades. That´s what I think anyway, and here´s why.

Details or Sample:
Lose the Grip on your Bottled Water
By PJ Rooks

San Francisco mayor, Gavin Newsom, started a firestorm of debate recently when he put into place an executive order which, in the interest of environmental conservation, bans the sale of bottled water on any property owned by the city of San Francisco and also prevents the distribution of bottled water in the city´s offices and facilities. The fancy water coolers will have to go, according to the new law, and city employees and visitors can go back to the water fountain for their next drink. Many have responded to this new order by saying that Newsom has no right to tell the residents of San Francisco how to live. My own take on it is that Newsom should be congratulated for such a bold and inspired move. He´s modeling for, not telling, us how to live. It´s about time someone did! Thank you, Mr. Newsom, for being the first to take an official stance.

Ever since the craze for bottled water got rolling in the 1980´s, I´ve been wondering: why is this supposedly fresh, clean and pure water packaged in something so environmentally destructive as plastic? Wouldn´t you want to put this product in something a little more bio-degradable? How does this industry expect to enjoy long-term success when the mere creation of so many bottles will eventually cause the pollution that is sure to be the industry´s own downfall? I don´t think it would be too far out of line to suggest that the makers of these products, many of them already having enjoyed huge market success for other products recognized the world over (Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola, for example) knew it from the start, but had deep enough pockets to start a public scare about the safety of drinking water, then grabbed their profiteering surfboards and rode the bottled water wave. Perhaps the pinnacle of its brilliance was that the inventors knew their time was limited and pulled it off anyway.

How they pulled this off in the country with the highest water standards on the planet is beyond me, though. In tests, bottled water has repeatedly performed no better than tap water when measured for chemical content. It performed as well as, but again, no better than, tap water when measured for microbial content, and when it comes to taste, it often performed worse in blind tests. The energy costs to produce and transport two bottles of water are more than four times the energy costs of driving one mile and when we´re finished with our bottles, we toss them away, un-smashed, where they contribute their annual 38 percent to the world´s landfills. All that and it´s not even fluoridated for the longevity of our teeth! How could these savvy business planners, when envisioning their future success with bottled water, have failed to see where this was headed? They didn´t. Is it fair to say that the huge success of bottled water has been the greatest marketing scam perpetrated upon unsuspecting consumers in the last three decades of American history? I sure think so.

From the perspective of conservation, bottled water couldn´t be more unethical, but it doesn´t stop there. Parents in other, less privileged, parts of the world are watching their little children die of water-borne illnesses while we dump dollar after useless dollar into the pockets of blue-chip bottlers. If you still just have to buy bottled water, by all means, go ahead -- then pack it into a FedEx box and ship it overseas to someone who really does need it. While you´re at it, why not ask that the bottlers do the same with the massive profits they´ve accumulated over the years with this ruse. It would take a really big, durable box to hold all that money, so maybe a plastic one would be best -- recycled plastic, of course, and there´s plenty available. Would anyone like to point them in the direction of the nearest landfill?

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Written by: PJ Rooks
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