Anybody remember the days when the first thing you did when you got thirsty on a hot summer day was head to the kitchen sink and pour yourself a cold glass of water? I do. I never thought twice about it as a kid. And somehow in my late adolescent years, like so many around me, my behavior changed. I started paying for water that came in plastic bottles.
At first, it felt weird. Why would I pay for something I could get for free? But strangely enough, stories kept appearing in the media about impurities in tap water, and somehow, subtly, the tap water started tasting funny. Cut to middle age, and I find myself a more or less unquestioning consumer of bottled water.
I've been had.
We've all been had.
No more.
This diary was inspired by this article, which explains how the bottled water industry is courageously fighting back against accusations that bottled water is an indulgence that damages the environment (more on that later):
On Friday, NEWSWEEK has learned, The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle will each carry a full-page ad containing a message from the International Bottled Water Association. This week’s campaign will be the first industrywide advertising since 1999. In the ads, the industry pushes the notion that "calorie-free, refreshing water" is a healthy choice in a country where diabetes, obesity and heart disease afflict so many people. But beyond touting those healthy virtues, the ad also seeks to subtly reframe the debate. "Whether it comes from a faucet or a bottle, drinking water is an easy step people can take to lead a healthier lifestyle," the ad says.
Get the gist? The industry response to the accusation that bottled water harms the environment is that it's better for you than Miller Genuine Draft.
That would be like the tobacco industry responding to the accusation that cigarettes cause cancer by saying that they take up less landfill space than diapers.
And so with a thousand pardons in advance for my colorful language, I want to reclaim some fucking sanity on this topic, okay? I want people to remember that we live in the United Fucking States of America, the country that landed a man on the moon and gave us 500 channels of basic cable, and ought to damn sight be able to provide clean, safe drinking water for its citizens so we don't need to choke our entire planet with a gullet full of non-degradable polymers.
Is your tap water bad for you?
Unfortunately, the news could be better:
In a June 2003 study of tap water from 19 U.S. cities conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the water quality and compliance of five cities was graded "poor" and eight were ranked as only "fair." The U.S. EPA, for its part, has been found to have overstated the quality of U.S. drinking-water supplies in recent years. The agency claimed that 94 percent of Americans were served by drinking-water systems that met all health standards in 2002, while internal documents indicate that the actual figure is about 81 percent...
The first step to clean drinking is to check out the quality of your tap water. Under the Safe Water Drinking Act, consumer confidence reports must be made publicly available, showing the levels of contaminants in local drinking water. Visit the U.S. EPA's local drinking water information page to find the report for your area.
Yeah, well, I tried to use the EPA site to determine how befouled my tap water was here in Studio City, and got an error message. Grover Norquist would no doubt be pleased. But the point is this: in this country, in the 21st century, public water is a crapshoot.
Trouble is, bottled water is the express lane to environmental meltdown.
According to a 2001 study by the World Wide Fund For Nature, 1.5 million tons of plastic are expended in the bottling of 89 billion liters of water each year. And that was six years ago.
But it's not so much the sheer mass of plastic as it is the sheer volume. Plastic must go somewhere, and much of it goes here, to an island of free floating debris in the North Pacific about the size of Texas. Read the article; my words cannot do it justice.
"But Termite," you say, "I recycle all of my plastic water bottles. Certainly I can't be having a negative impact on the environment."
Then first of all, cheers to you, because many people aren't as conscientious as you. But secondly, and here's the rub: guess what recycling uses lots and lots of?
Heh. Water.
Moreover, recycling isn't magical, and much of the plastic you toss in the recycling bin actually winds up in a landfill.
"Jesus Q. Christ on a sidecar, Termite," you exclaim, "What can I do?"
All I can ask is you follow your conscience. But here's what I'm doing. I'm going to make better choices.
First of all, I have a water purifier built into my home refrigerator, and I'm going to stop buying bottled water for home use and for my daughter's days at school and camp. That much is easy.
Secondly, I am going to stop buying bottled water at work and use the water cooler instead. It's not much further than the cafeteria, and all it requires is that I keep a cup relatively clean in my office.
Thirdly, I'm going to write a diary abou-... check.
And lastly, I'm going to act locally. If the EPA ain't gonna bother keeping their information up to date, I'm going to find out about my local tap water purity, and if it isn't up to snuff I'm going to do something about it. Not everybody can afford to have a refrigerator with a water purifier, and I know our planet can't afford six billion bottled water drinkers.
If any of you have any other suggestions about how to break the American bottled water habit and put a big fat fucking dent in this environmental atrocity, please post 'em here.