
There's a lot of folks ganging up on bottled water these days. One small independent grocery store near me has declared it won't sell water in bottles any more but only in bulk to people who bring their own containers. (Now there's a recipe for sanitation disaster!) And various articles in the press continue to carp about the product. This one by Peter Gleick, for example, though ostensibly about upgrading municipal water systems, takes a few swipes at bottles. People want to ban it because it comes in plastic bottles and plastic is bad.
Well, not always. I am all for being green and environmentally conscious, but all the bad press about bottled water really makes me kind of blue.
First, I think back a couple of decades when bottled water was not widely available in the U.S. In those days, when you weren't at home or at work, the drinking choices were limited. On a highway trip, you would find vending machines in gas stations chock full of soda pop but if you didn't want the sticky stuff, water wasn't an option. In a cafeteria line or fast food restaurant, the same deal. Many public places had the so-called "drinking fountain," which would spout a stream of too-cold water, 80% of which went to waste as you managed to catch a tiny sip. You could stand there all day and not quench a real thirst; and that was only if you were willing to brave using it after those people who drank by putting their mouth right down on the spout. For sporting events, you could take your own big jug, though water was heavy and the jugs cumbersome. If you frequented concert halls or theaters (the stage, not the cinema), water wasn't available there, either - and you couldn't take soda, or coffee, or other drinks into the hall due to legitimate concerns about spots and spills.
ALL THAT CHANGED WITH THE COMING
OF THE INDIVIDUAL SERVING OF
WATER IN A PLASTIC BOTTLE.
You can now buy it nearly anywhere, and even such august venues as the Kennedy Center in Washington DC do not hesitate to allow you your bottled water during the performance (if there is a spill, water doesn't stain.) In short, bottled water (the individual servings) are a huge advance in convenience; they support good health practices too, because they are use-once-throw-away, so no germs are transmitted; and they help keep us hydrated in situations where we couldn't manage that before.
Beyond convenience, the question of how "green" those bottles are is still open to interpretation. After all, recycling containers have sprouted nearly everywhere. They accept other bottles and cans too, but their ubiquity owes something to the ubiquity of the bottled water (thus water may be helping clean up containers of beer, soda, and who knows what else). For years we haven't had to toss an empty water bottle into a trashcan where it wouldn't be recycled. If some people neglect to recycle, we can do better on that, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Now, if you only drink bottled water because you think it's safer, that's a fallacy. It can contain pretty much anything your municipal water can (and a lot of it IS municipal water - read the labels!).
But taste is another matter. I was once an aficionado of tapwater. And still am, in places where it's drinkable. But the other main reason I find bottled water a godsend is that our municipal water in Arlington, Virginia tastes pukey (to put it mildly). It comes across the river from the District of Columbia, where it's pukey too. It's an old system that's had some problems with unpleasant things in the water. Consequently, they load it with chloramine, the taste of which does not dissipate as chlorine does. And who knows what it does to your insides? Tropical fish can't live in it. But taste is key, especially when you're drinking it at room temperature as we do. We'll make coffee with it; we'll boil foods in it; we'll water the garden with it; we'll flush our toilets with it. But we won't drink it. About the only worse thing you can drink is that lovely liquid they give you before a colonoscopy.
So, I'd really like to do away with the big bottles like those pictured above but can't. (Filters cost far more - we've calculated it.) If you live in a place with drinkable municipal water, I urge you to just use the tap. I would if I could. Which brings us back to Mr. Gleick's article. His main point is that we need to invest in our water infrastructure to maintain it and upgrade it. Arlington, Virginia is a prime example of why that's true.