Bottles Galore!!! part one: Romancing the Source

My Personal History

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?

A Love Story

     Monday was the 33rd anniversary of Earth Day.  Funny to have a day dedicated to taking care of our planet.  Congress declared April 22 Earth Day, January 16 National Fig Newton Day and November Fun with Fondue Month.   Almost every day of the year is dedicated to some food item.

     I remember the first Earth Day in 1970.  I was ten.  My family spent the day picking up trash along the road.  Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons had become a household name.  My mother, my first naturalist and teacher, was reconnecting with the world she had learned to love through her grandfather.  She had and still has a curiosity about nature.  My mother was eager to teach us kids about morel hunting, wooly bear caterpillars and chickadee songs.  We took family walks through the vast forest which held our house in a soft embrace.  We learned about pine pitch, oak leaves and how to read the signs of trampled leaves that showed us the way along mostly forgotten wood roads.

     All these experiences felt like tiny presents, secrets that unfurled before me like the intricate folds of a spring wildflower, more amazing, colorful and surprising as it opened.

     Is this when I first fell in love?  Was it climbing a pine tree to the very top branches, pine pitch gluing me to its limbs?  Perhaps while my sister and I were spending hours building a lean-to of broken branches and an old tarpaulin?  I think so.  I know so.

     So much like a first love, she has remained pure, closest to my heart. What name shall I use?  What do I call that which gives every time I open my eyes, every time I listen?  Nature, Mother Earth, Gaia, "all that is above, below and all around"?  Being in love with nature sounds so awkward as if I am in love with a chair instead of embraced by a vibrant knowing.

     For this gift I thank my mother, Eleanor.
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Where were you born?

by Eleanor Lord

I was born in a small eddy at the edge of a woodland stream.  Was I a slip of cells, a naiad, a water deva?  I stand now at the edge, listening to babbling, singing water and sigh, calm, complete.

In summer, the whirling water smells of damp soil and bright, moist moss.  I press my feet onto the stony streambed and dip my cupped hands for a taste of the bright water essence.

In winter, when the temperature falls quickly, drops of spray freeze on the overhanging branches, turning into fine, lacy, whorled shelves of ice.

To remember where I came from, where I am the most alive, brightens me.  When I feel parched, alone and have lost the ease and focus of a rill, I bring these images back.  I feel charged, alive and clear.

Our bodies are more than sixty percent water.  Over seventy percent of the earth's surface is covered in water.  All mammals, reptiles and many insects are born from water.  Our first nine months we live in water.  We cannot survive beyond three days without water.  Why do we take this essential resource for granted?  How can people grow rich, horde or pollute this elemental being?  How can we survive?


FLOW

I received multiple emails over the week prior to World Water Day.  I pursued a dozen links, read a lot of information and watched a very powerful documentary “FLOW: for love of water” by Irena Salina.   (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmWdco0glEA)  The images, data and voices of those who are affected by the growing water crisis continue to swirl around in my mind.  Some facts just made me cry, primarily because of the greed behind much of the shortage.  We are not only polluting water; corporations are controlling water, selling this resource in buckets for those who will pay and dribbling it out for those who can’t.  Water is a $400 billion dollar investment!  That’s a 2008 film!  

My purpose for this blog is to digest and use this information as catalyst for change.  There are many blogs and websites of fantastic organizations that can provide the data, the economic and environmental analyses.  I can become paralyzed by this information and sense of doom.  I cannot be the only one who feels this powerless.  But, unlike many of my neighbors who gave up recycling because they didn’t see results, I want to feel empowered.  The key to turning the tide on the water crisis asteroid that is barreling down on earth is education and feeling a connection to those who want to change it.  Giving money to a fantastic organization like Water for People is a big drop, but a lonely one.  So, I try to do my part.  And, like water, trickle, seep, drip and blurble out to friends and family, hoping to be flexible, energized and clear.    As Zolani Mahola from Freshlyground says in an interview, “We are an integral part of earth and all beings”.  She sings the “For Love of Water” song found on http://forloveofwater.co.za/. 

As I write this I am experiencing that same feeling of stuckness.  I am someone who wants to do.  To this end, I have stopped buying bottled water altogether, but my workplace buys big bottles of Poland Springs for the cooler.  Nestle owns Poland Springs as well as Perrier, Ice Mountain and Pellegrino.  Nestle has been active in diminishing aquifers in Michigan and other US states which has greatly affected their ecosystems.  Internationally, they are notorious for tapping aquifers so deeply that in poor rural communities like Bhati Dilwan in Pakistan the children are being sickened by filthy water. Nestlé dug a deep well that is depriving locals of potable water. The notoriously bad drinking water in Pakistan and elsewhere is the reason for the success of the Pure Life brand. A good 10 years ago, the Swiss food company began adding minerals to ground water and bottling it. Today, Pure Life Purified Water Enhanced With Minerals is the largest water brand in the world – “a jewel in our portfolio,” according to John Harris, head of Nestlé Waters.  This information is from “Bottled Life” by Swiss filmmaker Urs Schnell and journalist Res Gehriger.  The Bhati Dilwan village councilor interviewed in the film says Nestlé refused the village’s request for clean water to be piped in.  So, I will not drink the water from the cooler anymore, bring water from home and work on my employers to switch water companies.  More on tap water and bottled water for another day!

WORLD WATER DAY

World Water Day is held every March 22.

Recognized by the United Nations and the global community, World Water Day reminds us that much of the world still faces a global water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) crisis, and that it is our urgent obligation to act.

This year’s theme as designated by the UN General Assembly is: International Year of Water Cooperation.

As a testament to this theme, efforts to coordinate events for World Water Day 2013 are taking place across the globe. This year, we are especially excited about events happening around the United States, including: performances, walks for water, social media, forums, learning events, Advocacy Day, and Water Symposia! For more details on each event, see below.

Let’s all help to make every day World Water Day!

SOME FACTS

 

85% of the world population lives in the driest half of the planet.

 

783 million people do not have access to clean water and almost 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation.

 

In Africa alone, people spend 40 billion hours every year just walking for water. Women and children usually bear the burden of water collection, walking miles to the nearest source, which is unprotected and likely to make them sick. (source)

 

 Time spent walking and resulting diseases keep them from school, work and taking care of their families. Along their long walk, they're subjected to a greater risk of harassment and sexual assault. Hauling cans of water for long distances takes a toll on the spine and many women experience back pain early in life. With safe water nearby, women are free to pursue new opportunities and improve their families’ lives. Kids can earn their education and build the future of their communities.

A clean water project nearby means more than safe drinking water to women and children in developing nations; it means time, freedom and incentive to change their communities.

FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO SOME FANTASTIC LINKS ON THE LEFT

Certain Truths

“In the battle between the stream and the stone, the stream always wins — not through strength, but through persistence.”

~ unknown

There are some truths that I learned in my life as I grew up that just stick with me.  The shortest line between two points is a straight line.  Seems obvious, but I have found it to be more than that at times, because I lose my direction, my compass gets stuck.  Another truth that I think of most every day is that  earth has a finite amount of drinking water.  Truly!  At this point, it is you use it, you lose it.  The water cycle we all learned in grade school science class, evaporation, condensation, transpiration and rain makes it look like we are set forever.  Not so.  When it goes it goes.  So, I have a dilemma each time I wash the dishes or run the tap for the shower.  How can I prevent losing this water forever?  I’m not responsible for it all, but I feel I must do something.  Instead of standing over the sink and worrying unproductively on a daily basis I have decided to do this; share the conversation, in a step toward making a larger difference.  

Another truth:  It’s easier to feel bad about not doing things than doing something.  I have read a lot of  recommendations for saving water.  I will put some great links in that have fun diagrams, even games to play to teach kids and grown ups about it, from complicated to simple.  It all takes changing behaviors, habits.  The one I like a lot is putting in a grey water system.  Hmmm.  I’m handy, but…there’s the how-to, the health board stuff…  Maybe I know too much.  Other recommendations: take a shower instead of a bath.  Check, I do this and have got it down to under five minutes.  I can never figure out what others do in the shower for much longer anyway.  Limit watering garden and washing car.  Use grey water if you have it.  That seems doable.  Install a rain barrel.   Ooh, that’s good and possible.  Actually, it fits my techie/sculptor personality.  Rainreserve offers a converter kit to hitch up a 55 gallon barrel to the downspout of your gutter.  The kit is pretty cheap.

For the Change Challenge, I did 2 new things.  I made cottage cheese!  Very cool, very tasty.  I also looked at some anime on the web.  Anime is a kind of Japanese cartoons.  I had a purpose.  One of my young friends is gaga about it.  I wasn't so.

For the next challenge:  a tiny habit change.  Find a very little step toward a bigger habit change and start there.  Seriously little.  For example, I am notorious for leaving my coat on the back of the dining room chair.  This is only the tip of the iceberg in our house.  Clothes not getting where they need to be on a daily basis.  So, my tiny habit, hanging up my coat when I come in the house.  

Making a difference

Can we be like drops of water falling on the stone

Splashing, breaking, dispersing in air
Weaker than the stone by far but be aware
That as time goes by the rock will wear away
And the water comes again

         Wow!  This song comes back to me 20 years after I first heard Holly Near sing "The Rock Will Wear Away" at my first ever "women's music" concert.  We all exited the theatre singing, feeling empowered, connected and sure of this truth.

The Metta of Change – from individual to community to the world.  Can we imagine accomplishing changes together by our simple actions?  I believe so, as the song reminds me.

It takes effort, I think, others say to me, to one another.  Less so, apparently, if I am listening to that ubiquitous, pesky "inner voice".  For years, and I mean years, I felt I was the only one who didn’t know what I wanted, didn’t have a feeling of belonging, a clarity of purpose.  I didn’t know what I truly wanted to be when I grew up, though, essentially everyone is always who we are going to be.  There are people in my life who are drawn to their path with seemingly little searching and I have envied that.  My talented and focused brother-in-law Lee and nephew Samuel found their paths with clear direction.  Me, I have been a wanderer, a dabbler, a good generalist and all round good learner, but frustrated.  I have followed a snake’s circuitous path. 

Just recently I let go of thinking an “inner voice” would speak to me like the angel Gabriel.  I listened to a voice that said, it’s alright, and the effort slipped away.  The creative part of myself, fractured early on by multiple life experiences that I let determine my self-definition, has suddenly bubbled up, splashing and energized.  I feel the capillary action of water, drawing me up, filling me with ideas and possibilities.  Where am I going?  It is still a snake-like path, but bubbling and bursting in the air.

This blog is not intended to be a “I have found my calling and yes, you can too!”   My focus on change has been one of the tools that helped get me out of feeling stuck.  And, water has kept seeping into my consciousness, reminding me of flexibility, vitality and clarity. So, to water, one live and vibrant element, I am grateful.

 

The first of many change challenges for anyone who has made it thus far.  Use it or you lose: it is really true.  As the years go by, we do fewer and fewer new things.  Our brains get rigid and our bodies even more so.  Try doing a somersault if you haven’t done one in a long time, then you might see what I mean.  Generally, we walk, brush our teeth, put the paper in the printer, hug our dog the same way.  Face it, our lives are routinized.  Our bodies used to fewer and fewer movements.  New is good and good for all of you that know this.  The challenge…to do something this week you have never, ever done before.  Learn how to say, I love you in Latvian, or try running backwards while singing "Happy Birthday" or eat a food that you've never tried.  Silly is good, laughing is better and I hope you have fun.  Life can be quite amazing!