Drink Tap Not Crap

Drink Tap Not Crap

Kelsey Brown

            I want to see a hand if you carry a reusable water bottle? Of course, its all the cool kids. These students are fueling a revolution like water has never seen before. Over the years, the bottled water industry has become a serious problem throughout the world. These oppressive corporations drive to destroy any opponents by a three step process that kicks local economies, jabs public health, and punches our nation’s environment.

            These companies manufacture their own demand for an unnecessary product. On average, bottled water is 2,000 times the price of tap water. You can compare that to a $10,000 foot-long. If the sandwich industry began to sell us products costing thousands of dollars, the public would revolt – just as they did when the bottled water industry first began. However, this multibillion dollar market found a way to convince the public they needed this product over anything else. The industry uses this “manufactured demand” to scare, seduce, and mislead the public into buying their product. Do we really want to sacrifice our quality of life by financing these “fat cats” in their dangerous habitat?

            I think not. It has been found that one-third of the water packaged in these plastic water bottles are actually just distilled tap water. This statistic includes both Coke’s Dasani and Pepsi’s Aquafina brands. What’s ironic is in a public interview, Pepsi’s Vice Chairman called tap water “the biggest enemy.” Not only are these corporations putting the local water companies in thousands of dollars of debt, but they are also causing health problems throughout the country. BPA, found in many types of plastic bottles is known to be harmful in even small doses. This chemical stops natural estrogens from getting into cells, causing a full spectrum of problems including ADHD, obesity, and breast cancer. Because the CDC and FDA really have no specific reign over bottled water, it has often been found that tap water is actually more pure than the leading bottle of water. Not only that, but several blind taste tests have all concluded that tap is the public’s preferred method of water.

            Not only are they harming the public’s financial and health situations, but these companies are also damaging the environment in a way we may never be able to repair. 80% of all water bottles go to spend thousands of years in landfills or incinerators, even, where they are burned, releasing toxins into the very air we breathe. The more shocking, however, found when we investigated the other 20%. It turns out hundreds of thousands of “recycled” water bottles are being shipped over to India. These water bottles create mountains of plastic, harming another country with our trash. Finally, these bottles are downgraded into other plastic products that cannot even be recycled, positioning them in the landfill after all. We are hurting other countries with our stupidity, and it needs to stop. Each year, the oil used to create plastic bottles for water is enough to fuel a million cars. And not only that, but these bottle companies are knowingly polluting local bodies of water – just so they can step in and receive the profit from this public, now unable to drink their local water.

In reality, most bottled water comes from within the state where it was purchased, whether it has the name of a hot vacation spot or not. We are meant to think these idealistic images of mountains, valleys, and flowers are a correlation of this wonderful product, when actually they just hired someone who has a good knowledge of Photoshop. That water has never even been remotely close to these environments we think they are from. These images, paired with adjectives like “pure,” “cleansing,” “hydrating,” and “fresh” make us consider buying a product we could get for free – just because it looks and sounds better.

So please, my fellow students, stop paying extra to ruin our community. Start lobbying for public water infrastructure projects, help prevent pollution in our 17 hundred and 58 square kilometers of inland water, promote the installation of community drinking fountains, and go out and get yourself a pretty little designer water bottle.  Make a difference in the world we all live in. And drink tap; not crap. Thank you.

Bibliography

EWG Public Affairs. “FDA Should Adopt EPA Tap Water Health Goals for Bottled Water | Environmental Working Group.” EWG Home | Environmental Working Group. Environmental Working Group, 19 Nov. 2008. Web. 10 Aug. 2011. http://www.ewg.org/BottledWater/newsrelease/FDA-Should-Adopt-EPA-Tap-Water-Health-Goals-for-Bottled-Water.

Mui, Ylan Q., and Lori Aratani. “Bottled Water Boom Appears Tapped Out.” The Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines – The Washington Post. The Washington Post Company, 13 Aug. 2011. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR200908120374.html.

Natural Resources Defense Council. Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype? Rep. Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype? Natural Resources Defense Council, Mar. 1999. Web. 10 Aug. 2011. http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/bwinx.asp.

The Story of Bottled Water. Dir. Louis Fox. Prod. Erica Priggen. Perf. Annie Leonard. The Story of Stuff. Free Range Studios. Web. 10 Aug. 2011. http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/.

Tapped. Dir. Stephanie Soechtig and Jason Lindsey. Atlas Films, 2009. Netflix.