Bottled Water

Okay so along with being a crazy liberal democrat, I am also a crazy liberal democrat environmentalist. And this semester I’m taking a class on water issues called Urban Public Issues. So this week my blog is about bottled water – the biggest scam in the history of the United States & the world.
Bottled water has become a trend in the United States & around the world today. People buy more bottled water then they buy beer or milk, which is absolutely stunning. Why are people paying so much money for something that they can get out of the tap water for free? The bottled water industry is 60 BILLION dollar industry globally each year. Instead of spending the money that they spend on bottled water, they can save that & buy a $10 Nalgene & refill anywhere that they want. Even in the midst of an economic crisis, people still seem to think that bottled water is a necessity, when it is actually something that you don’t need.
Last semester (& this semester too), I was part of a campaign called “Think Outside the Bottle.” Our mission was for people to understand the global water crisis & the ill effects that bottled water has on our society & humanity. Our big project for the challenge was a taste test. We set up tables outside of D2 & Owens & had little Dixie cups filled with tap water from Pritchard, Dasani, & Hokie Water. We asked people who walked by if they could tell the difference between the three. Surprisingly, most people though Dasani tasted the worst & could not tell the difference between the local tap & Hokie water. And every time I see someone wasting their money buying Hokie water, I get frustrated because they do not know the consequences of what they’re buying.
I think the reason that people have this obsession with bottled water is because it shows status. In today’s world, bottled water has become a luxury & less of a necessity. Yes, I know that we all need water to survive, but the water coming from your tap will satisfy this need. In fact, your tap water is something that is highly regulated. Bottled water on the other hand, is not. It’s regulated by the FDA so it is only monitored if it crosses state lines. People also are more on the run then they have been in the past. They eat a lot of meals in the car & bottled water is easy to grab. But your Nalgene is just as easy to grab. People try to nullify the fact that bottled water is bad for the environment by saying that they recycle the bottles. And that’s great because only 10% of bottled water is actually recycled. But they need to cut off the problem at its source and just stop buying water.
A lot of people think that caring for the environment doesn’t involved them or it doesn’t matter. But it does; earth is the only planet that we have to live on so we need to take care of it. The mistakes that we are taking today will affect humanity for years to come.