Bottlemania

Posted: 25.11.08  |  Created by: Elizabeth Royte

Elizabeth Royte, author of  "Bottlemania"

“I came away from my investigations with at least one certainty: not all tap water is perfect. But it is the devil we know, the devil we have standing to negotiate with and to improve. Bottled-water companies don't answer to the public, they answer to shareholders. As Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman write in Thirst, "If citizens no longer control their most basic resource, their water, do they really control anything at all?" Bottled water does have its place - it's useful in emergencies and essential for people whose health can't tolerate even filtered water. But it's often no better than tap water, it's environmental and social price is high, and it lets our public guardians off the hook for protecting watersheds, stopping polluters, upgrading treatment and distribution infrastructure, and strengthening treatment standards.

Certainly, nearly everything humans do has an environmental impact - biking to work, recycling newspapers, and drinking tap water included. But understanding that impact is the first step toward reducing it. It's true that the impact of bottled water looks miniscule next to other water uses - growing beef, say, or manufacturing cars. But try telling that to someone who lives on a spring water truck route or who drinks from a well that shares an aquifer with a commercial pump.

If someday I find myself wanting to buy bottled water, I will do it as an informed consumer, someone who knows that the images on the label may not reflect the ecological reality, that part of its sticker price may be landing on the pockets of lawyers and PR flacks, that profits probably aren't benefiting those who live near the source, and that the bottle and its transportation have a significant carbon footprint. And then I will try to drink with the fullest pleasure; pleasure that to quote Wendell Berry on the pleasure of eating, "does not depend on ignorance."