Water

The worsening drought in California, as well as in many other places is bringing water awareness to the forefront.

It blew my mind to learn that through all the years of shortage, there have been no residential water restrictions on most California residents. Isn't that crazy? They have instituted their first rules, and residential water consumption has instantly dropped from 30-40%.

People have also started freaking out about beverage companies in the drought zones continuing to bottle water. I don't quite understand what that is all about, but am loving the awareness. Citizens are saying to boycott products from those corporations. Others are saying to stop using bottle water altogether.

By whatever route, opinion is finally swinging into sync with my own.

Bottled water is stupid.

I came from a time when drinking water came from taps. Around me, it still does.

My first exposure to ordinary water in bottles came during a visit to Germany over 20 years ago. Nobody there drank tap water. When we asked why, nobody seemed to know. They admitted that tap water was perfectly safe. I, therefore, tried some and it was absolutely fine. It tasted exactly like water.

Even back then, if you wanted water in a German restaurant, they brought you the bottled stuff and charged you accordingly. You had to be specific to get tap water, and even then got looks like it was something they'd never even heard of.

Our second exposure was also pretty far back. We were in Disneyland near Los Angeles. For the first time, we saw vendors at the Disney parades selling bottled water. There were all the usual sellers of balloons, soda, snacks, but also ice-cold bottled water. I thought this very stupid, as the soft drinks were both larger and less expensive. Folks flocked to buy water.

It has since grown like madness.

What do I have against it?

There is the cost. We pay less per day for unlimited water to be supplied to our home that we would pay for a single bottle of water. It is mid-morning, and I have so far I have made a pot of coffee, done a load of laundry, washed my face, flushed a couple of times, and run the dishwasher. All this at less than the price of one bottle of the exact same liquid, and the day has hardly begun.

There is also a massive environmental cost. All our household water comes from the municipal supply at a minimal environmental cost. None of it is hauled around on trucks from place to place. It is also not packaged. Bottled water comes in those lovely plastic container. This would be bad enough, even if every single one were recycled, but only about 30% ever are. The remaining 70% end up in landfills and scattered around the countryside in general. In heavily populated areas it's a huge concern.

There is also quality and safety. Municipal water supply is incredibly safe, and held to the highest standards of purity. Some North American cities had the safety factor, but had stuff that could only be described as yucky in taste, but even this has changed. Los Angeles used to have the worst-tasting water anywhere, but no longer. On our most recent visit I was merrily guzzling it like it was, well, water.

Bottled water is not regulated in the same way. Patrons are trusting corporations to keep them safe by providing good tasting and safe water. Personally, I don't trust corporations any farther than I can throw them. I like water that has been sterilized by local authorities under the direction of higher government regulation.

There is also the sucker factor. Customers are told one thing, and given another. Bottled water is always presented as coming form clear mountain springs. It very rarely is. The most common source for bottled water is municipal water supplies. Sometimes it gets filtered, but this is totally up to the corporation involved. It is perfectly legal for them to fill their bottles from city water, name it something attractive, put pictures of mountain streams on the label, and sell it in the supermarket on the same street where it was produced for over a thousand times higher price.

I should perhaps harp more about taste. Let's say you buy a bottle of water that some corporation has actually brought it from some huge factory that actually uses dandy mountain water. To get it to you, they hauled it a thousand miles in a big stinky truck, and packaged it for you in a clear plastic bottle that likely will end up in some landfill. By the time it gets to you, there will have occurred a tiny bit of chemical leeching from the bottle. If you were drinking cola, or juice, this would be undetectable, but water has no masking flavour of its own. On the few times I've had water out of a bottle it has always tasted like plastic. Yum. My tap water tastes of nothing.

My wife carries a water bottle. It is made of glass, and lasts for years.