Amy Goodman, whom I love and respect, is reporting on this meme going around lately that bottled water is evil and stupid. Evil, because it consumes resources and creates waste and stupid because it is economically silly to pay 7000 times more for something than you have to.
I think this is mostly true but I also think it misses some very important points:
1. It’s better that people are buying water than buying soda. A bottle of water is healthy and a soda is unhealthy. We don’t seem to have a problem with people paying $1.29 for a Coke, but for some reason we see it as a waste of resources to provide a healthy alternative. The expensive part of getting me a cold bottle of water out of a vending machine is the bottle, putting it in the bottle, getting it nearby and keeping it cold and readily available. Getting a drink of water, for free, in downtown Minneapolis is not convenient nor probably sanitary. It’s my decision if I want to pay for the convenience of nearby, cold, purified water.
2. Aquafina, and most bottled water, is processed with reverse osmosis. This is a very cool process that make for very pure water. It is no big deal at all if they use tap water as the input into the reverse osmosis machine. The water produced by reverse osmosis is vastly more pure than the tap water going in.
I drink filtered tap water at home. I drink filtered tap water at work. I don’t mind buying a bottle of filtered tap water every now and then for $1.29. I think there are downsides of the water boom and we should put pressure on governments and companies to provide pure water ubiquitously for free. We should make all distribution processes, whether for water or Coke, as environmentally efficient as possible. That’s obvious.
There are problems but they are solvable. We should not necessarily be upset that people are willing to spend money on convenient, purified drinking water instead of just buying another Coke.
lolife 
Hey man!, I debated flaming you hard, but refrained. You totally tee’d yourself up.
see?, restraint! Left Wing Pussy Ass restraint…
LikeLike
hey, c’mon, i was expecting to get flamed. it’s no fun if you don’t take my bait!
pansy-ass dirty left-wing commie liberals. 😉
LikeLike
I think we are in an era where un-biased reporting just does not exist. It is up to the information consumer to find the “bent”.
I completely agree with mics quote:
“Tell a lie loud enough and often enough and the uninformed will believe it. It’s so cynical and lacking in intellectual honesty. Whenever I see something like this I think, gee, if you really have a point, if you really have an argument, why must you lie to make your argument?”
where can humans find un-biased anything?
LikeLike
I find that the writing and reporting in the above referenced article to be very deceptive and dishonest (which I find true of much of the reportage that comes from the left, IMHO).
The article makes it seems like Pepsi, and other bottlers, basically just open up a tap and fill up a bottle when that is pretty far from the truth. Amy’s statement in the first paragraph that “Its bestselling Aquafina bottled water is nothing more than tap water” is typical of much of the propaganda originating from the left. Tell a lie loud enough and often enough and the uninformed will believe it. It’s so cynical and lacking in intellectual honesty. Whenever I see something like this I think, gee, if you really have a point, if you really have an argument, why must you lie to make your argument?
To say it’s “nothing more than tap water” is just a blatant lie. I see this as just another example of the left attempting to vilify corporate America.
LikeLike
Reverse Osmosis costs money….I have a fairly expensive system for my Saltwater fish hobby..
the water is incredibly pure and our tap water is incredibly filthy….I change filters once every six months for my stupid fish…(actually quite nice fish), because the filter has started to fill up with gunk…you actually “see” the gunk build up on the filters before 100 gallons are filtered..
The problem I see with the bottled water companies is selling us the idea that this water is coming out of some “free flowing well high in the swiss alps, where it is only touched by the hands of lovely blonds with huge cleavages”….
when in reality it is much more pure.
you are paying for purity, convenience, hydration,the bottle and the labeling.
LikeLike