Marita Prandoni has a passion for exploring different cultures and worldviews. She draws inspiration from her family, tutoring extraordinary youth, meeting unexpected heroes and from the stunning natural beauty of her home turf in and around Santa Fe, NM.
| Tapping Back Into the Source: The Death of Bottled Water |
| Thursday, 16 September 2010 | Marita Prandoni | Blog Entry |
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It has also become an ecological disaster. The Earth Policy Institute estimates that 1500 water bottles end up as garbage every second. And its life cycle doesn’t stop there. The ubiquitous plastic bottle peppers our landscapes and is a main ingredient in the tossed plastic salad of the North Pacific Gyre, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, estimated to cover an area twice the size of Texas. Plastic waste breaks down in the sun, disintegrating into miniscule particles that act like sponges for chemicals like PCBs. These toxins enter the food chain when sea creatures ingest plastic particles, which resemble zooplankton and are now seven times as prevalent. Corporations tap into public water resources for pennies and rake in millions of dollars in profit. Bottled water requires more than 2,000 times the energy to get to the consumer than tap water. Moreover, the Environmental Working Group tested 10 major brands and found 38 contaminants. Potable water, which used to be a birthright, has become a privatized commodity. Its extraction (often from powerless, indigenous communities), transport and consumption can lead to social and environmental squalor. In Guatemala—where there is inadequate water infrastructure and cholera outbreaks are common—bottled water is essential. Unfortunately, the agua pura plastic bottles are also used as fuel for cooking fires. Idyllic mornings in the volcanic highlands near the crystalline Lake Atitlan are muddled by toxic plumes of fetid smoke from burning plastic wafting from the villages. Fortunately, governments around the world have begun banning the purchase of bottled water using taxpayer funds and are evaluating whether water extraction from their communities is in the public interest. Bundanoon, a town in New South Wales, Australia, just became the first city to completely ban the sale of bottled water. We are slowly evolving socially by arriving at the realization that bottled water is wasteful. A clever, star-studded advertising campaign that touts the coolness and intelligence of reusable portable containers could help push the single-use plastic water bottle into obsolescence. And with some luck and ingenuity, water purification will become less costly and hastily implemented in poor countries. So, before you reach for that convenient bottled water, find out what’s in your tap water. If it’s safe, it will flow with essential minerals and the good karma of not having oppressed others, damaged the environment, or made yourself a sucker for paying for something that is virtually free and easily transported with a reusable metal container. Additional resources: Updated 9/16/10; originally posted 7/26/09.
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In the early 1980s, bottled water became the new hip craze. Celebrity-studded magazines featured svelte stars toting pedigree brands to advertise the 0-calorie beverage, which kept their skin looking young and their bodies lean. Advertisers wagered that if the masses would snatch up trends like Beanie Babies® and Pet Rocks®, they’d buy the same water they could get from their tap for 2,000 times the price, merely for the convenience of lightweight portability. And they were right. Bottled water has grown into a $15 billion-a-year industry. 
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