Sunday life: why we should resist bottled water. Like, now.
This week I don’t drink bottled water (actually, I haven’t drunk the stuff for several years, but I’m kinda ensconced in this “look what I happened upon this week” theme…so let’s just ride it for now).
Recently I aborted a liaison with a guy because he didn’t recycle. To be fair (to me?), it wasn’t that he didn’t recycle per se. It was the reasoning he gave for why he felt entitled to leave the carrying out of one’s tuna tins to the communal bins to everyone else. “If I start,” he moaned. “Then where do I stop?“ What he meant was, if I give a shit about my cans, won’t it just open a Pandora’s box of care from which there’s no turning back? A life of cutting plastic windows from envelopes, keeping a bucket in the shower and hypermilling? Won’t it set in train the collapse of the whole merry house of cards? Yes, yes, my friend, it will.
All of which is a loose segue to a subject I’ve been busting to cover: bottled water, and how quitting it makes life better.
Drinking bottled water complicates life. It clutters flow with needless stuff.
Digest this: it takes 200ml of oil and up to seven litres of water (although here in Australia 2-3 litres is mostly cited) to produce a 1 litre bottle.
Yeah, and that’s before it’s transported from some far-flung locale. Bottled water is heavy and takes up a lot of room, leaving a Big Foot-like carbon print. Then there’s the clutter of empty bottles we’re left with. More stuff we then need to do…more stuff with. Recycling is cluttery – as Mr Care-Averse above will attest. And don’t kid yourself everyone else is doing it in your stead. They’re not. About 65 per cent of bottles end up in landfill.
Many brands now swath this head-spinning mess in “green wash”. One brand harking from a popular Pacific archipelago has gone “carbon negative” by buying wads of credits. But this doesn’t negate the fact that the emissions are burnt in the first place. Nor that they’re buying the credits with the vast profits they make from duping us into buying something we don’t need. It just adds another cluttery layer of non-logic.
While we’re nodding toward this particular Pacific outpost:
one-third of the people from said island don’t have access to fresh running water.
In fact one-sixth of the world doesn’t, and it’s been estimated just 20 per cent of our annual $US75 billion expenditure on bottled water could remedy this tragic situation. I don’t know about you, but ethical guilt can really drag my day down.
Ah, but it’s the taste of tap water that forces you into buying bottled. Actually, countless blind taste tests prove we can’t tell the difference.
A Melbourne study revealed just 12 per cent of tasters preferred bottled.
Perhaps it’s the chemicals in tap? Fact: the quality of tap water is monitored just as – if not more – vigorously than bottled (the industry is largely unregulated) and a lot of bottled water is just tap water. Repackaged. Replete with scare campaigns about how bad tap water is. Der.
Plus, fluoride in tap water also makes life better. Ask any dentist.
Drinking tap water also keeps you on the ball. Or at least drinking bottled seems to mess with one’s ability to reason. During the week, a waitress, on her break and necking a bottle of spring water, told me she couldn’t abide the chemicals in regular tap stuff. She was smoking a cigarette at the time. My office colleague who just ate a packet of Burger Rings tried to tell me his body is too much of a temple for trace chlorine. All three of us live in a large, polluted city. Besides, there are filters. And refillable bottles you can buy at camping stores, which, in fact, leach far fewer chemicals than the disposable versions. And, as Jon Dee from gotap.com.au shared with me this week: there are these cool collapsible Platypus water “bottles” that, when not in use can fold into your pocket or handbag.
Further, when you drink tap you don’t look like a bloody idiot. When you pare things back the only reason left for drinking bottled is that you’ve been duped by crude marketing spin. Drinking bottled says to the world, “I’ve been scare-mongered into paying up to 2000 times more for a product, by an industry that needs to replace its declining soft-drink market and will stop at nothing to do so”. (Can you imagine paying $6000 for a latte?) Finally, drinking tap water is to care. When you care, you steer your choices yourself from a stable space. And, yes, it involves demolishing houses of cards.
Which is more fun and authentic than defending someone else’s, no?
I need to get one of those machines so I can sparkle my own water. That’s the only bottled water I buy at the moment.
[Reply]
Thanks for the tip on the colapsable water bottle. I just bought a couple!
My partner and I invested in a Brita water filter “cask” a few years ago and it gets filled up ever couple of days. You can tast the difference….well I can anyway!
The colapsable bottles wil be great for work and the gym. No more soggy sneakers from accidental bag leakage again!
[Reply]
I prefer to drink tap water as I drinlk 4 – 6 litres a day. If I purchased a fresh bottle that is an expenisve habit. I do at times purchase & drink bottled water when I am out and about as it not always convenient to carry around that much water in one go! What are the stats on producing cola products that are packaged in plastic bottles or beer (I read an article about the amount of water that it takes to produce a bottle of beer, can’t recall the exact stats but I did rasie an eyebrow at the figures).
[Reply]
Hi Sarah
I live with an avid recycler…My wife Gai even washes the tins and containers up before they go in the recycle bin
[Reply]
“Fluoride in tap water makes life better. Just ask your dentist.”
“As your dentist, I would recommend Viceroys (They filter the smoke)” – Circa 1947
http://www.fluoridealert.org/statement.august.2007.html
Fluorine is the most reactive element, due to its relatively large electron cloud against the size of the nucleus. As such, ionised (dissolved in water) fluoride compounds react readily with many enzymes in biological systems including humans, and are associated with behavioral lassitude and conversely hyperactivity in developing offspring. This is well documented in studies in the 80s by Dr. Phillis Mullinex Ph.D, former member of the American Dental Association, who was subsequently dismissed following a publication on the neurotoxicity of fluoride in the same era (www.fluoridealert.org/pmullenix.htm / http://www.ccpurewater.org/Phyllis%20Mullenix.html ). There is also significant evidence that fluorine contributes to the calcification of the human pineal gland in the brain, responsible for the regulation of melatonin (sleep/hormone/randy-ness regulator) and N,N-dimethyltryptamine (naturally occuring psychedelic present in almost all flora and fauna).
And yes, I do hear the silent uproar of all those who’ve seen Stanley Kubricks Dr. Strangelove.
Christopher Bryson mentions in his book that “today Nile Southern, the son of Dr. Strangelove’s screenwriter, Terry Southern, remarks that the news that U.S. military and industrial
interests—not Communists— promoted water fluoridation is “just shocking. Terry and Stanley [ Kubrick] would have been horrified by it.”"
FYI RE: Recycling
http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/92358/detail/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1444391672891013193
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzLebC0mjCQ
[Reply]
Yes yes yes!!!! Great post Sarah.
[Reply]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by sarah wilson. sarah wilson said: Sunday life post up http://bit.ly/b5hVfN [...]
Hi Sarah
Thank you for your article today.
I haven’t bought bottled water for a few years now, especially after reading “Blue Covenant” from Maude Barlow; you can’t drink coca-cola or bottled water after having read this great book.
To answer the other posts, for info about coca cola’s water usage simply go on their website, it is at the moment around 2.47l of water per litre of coke. My wife was a big user of sparkling water (1litre/day) we bought a soda stream a few years ago to make sparkling water with tap water, it’s fantastic…
I’ll try the collapsible bottle.
Cheers
Nicolas
[Reply]
This was great. Well written and interesting. And even though I dont drink bottled water anyway, and I was aware of some of this info already, other parts were totally informative – incl. the good tip on the collapsable bottle!
[Reply]
You make the only point of why I will pay to drink water in Australia. ‘Plus flouride in water makes life better’. I don’t want added flouride in my body and don’t consider a dentist as medical advice.
[Reply]
Agree, except for the flouride, as it has been shown to be very bad for the thyroid. Brita filters don’t get rid of it. At the moment I’m buying cask water. I hate the packaging but after struggling with a thyroid problem for years, am doing everything I can to feel better.
[Reply]
May 4th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
I’ve had a few comments to this effect and will post some info now!! Thank you Juliette
[Reply]
Hi Sarah
Great article. Just thought you might be interested in my business, called Treading Gently which is operating out of Melbourne. I supply a great hair shampoo and conditioner with organic oils, however my big point of difference is that I offer a refilling service. It is like a “swap and go” system where people return empty bottles. I clean these with an alcohol solution to ensure no contaminants and then they’re filled again and come with a new cap. I think each bottle could go around 20 times before being recycled. The benefits of doing this simple task is enormous when you look at the resources used in making an individual plastic bottle!
[Reply]
May 4th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Gorgeous idea. You should submit the idea to Springwise.com
[Reply]
I also buy cask water as well. I honestly don’t like the taste of tap water and also get a headache from the added fluoride. I don’t think the government should decide when people need fluoride treatments. Plus, as a person who is having trouble conceiving, I have been told by several doctors that that tap water has traces of hormones and the pill in it, both of which can hinder fertility. But I agree about the bottles!
[Reply]
I totally agree with your sentiments Sarah, I don’t understand the whole bottled water thing…..a marketing ploy for people with more monmey than brains!
What I don’t understand, for someone who enjoys reading your columns, is why you start the topic by ‘outing’ someone else. It would seem that you need to make someone else ‘wrong’ and yourself ‘right’. I don’t know whether there is any right or wrong on this topic, let alone any topic, it just is. I agree with trying to increase people’s awareness and ultimately choices in life but i’m not sure about the ‘ego’ in the introduction. Maybe it was just a way of introducing a topic, I hope so, because it doesn’t seem to hold to the theme of ‘making life better, sweeter’.
[Reply]
Have you heard about this recent documentary on the subject? http://www.tappedthefilm.com/ I haven’t seen it yet, but the previews look really good.
I think, yeah, a lot of people want to cover their eyes, close up their ears and hum and try to avoid these types of things, but we just can’t any longer. Even if you try to ignore it now, it is going to catch up to you like it or not. I’d rather at least attempt to be a part of change for the better than to know that there was something more I could have done.
[Reply]
In some places the tap water tastes disgusting, I’ve just got back from Namibia where the water is so chlorinated it tastes like you’re drinking swimming pool water. Still, buying bottled water is insane, as you so rightly point out. I’ve solved my water issues by finding a local spring where I take my own 25L container and fill it up, for free.
[Reply]
A better idea is to collect your own spring water. Delicious. You CAN tell the difference.
http://www.findaspring.com
Flouride is NOT good for you.
[Reply]
Great stuff lady.
Reminds me of this video with a comical and rather geeky personification of Bottled VS Tap Water
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ6kUoiMhWk
[Reply]
Re: Flouride.
Ammendment: It is good for you. Rubbed on your teeth. NOT good in your gut. Should NOT be in our water. Agreed
Removable through reverse osmosis or through a simply made Solar-Still.
Google it pets
x
[Reply]
[...] few weeks back I posted about why I don’t drink bottled water. Happily it inspired a stack of people to reconsider their [...]
[...] less guilty). I’ve lived in Vancouver, and I’ve lived in Sweden. Really, there is no reason to drink bottled water in either of these [...]
[...] Do you drink bottled water? I try really hard not too and Sarah Wilson makes some great points on Why We Should Resist Bottled Water, NOW [...]
Citizens are a lot more divided about drinking water since the government added it in to most of the tap water in Australia. There are a lot of arguments about fluoride but if you have an RO system to remove fluoride it will also remove between 95%-100% of all other impurities. A post membrane in line mineraliser will add back essential minerals.
Here is some information on the reverse osmosis process http://www.splishwater.com.au/Reverse... which you can order on line at https://earth.dnstemplate.com/splishw...
There is also an activated carbon water filter with a fluoride absorbent media which decreases fluoride in the water by an average of 85% over its useful life and only costs $ 34.95 https://earth.dnstemplate.com/splishw...
The quality of our drinking water is increasingly becoming our own responsibility as the government cannot afford to provide us with water that meets the WHO guidelines http://www.splishwater.com.au/Compari...
[Reply]
[...] this and it will make you want to buy [...]
[...] Why we should resist bottled water. Like now. (Sarah Wilson) [...]
What a Capital Douche (him, not you). x
[Reply]
I once knew a family of seven who drank exclusively bottled water. When asked what they thought about the environmental impact of all that plastic, they replied that they recycled it, so it was OK.
Now for a statistic: Although plastic bottle recycling rates are at an all-time high, the percentage of plastic bottles that actually get recycled is around 27 percent, and has been since 1990. (source: http://earth911.com/recycling/plastic/plastic-bottle-recycling-facts/)
So, if you are still using plastic bottles because you figure recycling means it’s not harming the environment, think again. And for everyone who has stopped the bottled habit and wants another neat argument for those people who insist on continuing to waste their money on the stuff, there you are.
[Reply]