Years ago, when still water started to be available at the local convenience store, I had thought, cool! Convenient and everyone needs to hydrate more. 8 glasses a day and all. THEN, the bottles grew into heaps and piles along the road and in landfills, rows in the cooler, and aisles at the grocery store. Colorful, shapely and multiplying like Tribbles on the Enterprise. The utter ridiculousness of bottled water hit me when I realized I had fallen in love with a square bottle flown all the way across the world from Fiji to my thirsty lips.
I became obsessed with bottled water. I started collecting them. I wanted to create a sculpture of bottles as a testament to commercial trickery and gullibility. All over the world, people were fooled into believing water in bottles, packaged so alluringly, was hundreds of times healthier than tap water. Scaaarrryyy tap water. I collected over 20 different brands without much searching and that did not include flavored or "enhanced" water. (The number of enhanced and flavored varieties have multiplied tremendously just in the past year). Wow, the packaging alone is amazing, some even sexy! Shapely bottles with descriptions of exotic vacation spots; the Fiji Islands, family owned artesian well in the Maine woods, mountain springs at the foothills of the Alps, pure Icelandic glaciers. Fantastic. Who wouldn't buy a bottle? My favorite bottle was a deep cobalt blue from Wales. I'd love to vacation there!
To keep the romance going, glass bottles reemerged to address concern that chemicals contained in plastic bottles can be released into the water, especially after heating. (A steel shipping container, sitting on the deck of a freighter, full of pallets of bottled water from Fiji comes to mind). These chemicals are attributed to causing health problems. Many plastic bottles now advertise as BPA free (Bisphenol A).
Fiji? What about the carbon footprint of those bottles? What amount of petrochemicals is used and pollution caused by bottling in plastic and shipping them across the world? Or even from "deep aquifers" in the mountains of Tennessee? Poland Spring Water, (no longer from Poland Springs, Maine), quickly got that covered. They now use thinner plastic for the bottles and tiny bottle caps. The lighter, trimmed-down bottles are claimed to reduce waste and stress on the environment.
At least one bottled water company advertises it will donate a percentage of their profits to a socially responsible cause. Undoubtedly, the folks who are receiving the donated funds really need safe, potable drinking water as well as proper sanitation, but bottles are more fun!!
Have you been romanced? Do you even drink tap water anymore? Check out new links about tap water and look for part 2: What's Really in that Bottle?
