H 2 Ohhhhhhh

Gene Simmons walked jubilantly into the classroom. Not Gene Simmons the rock star, but my new Sociology professor at the local community college. This late middle-aged man with frazzled grey hair and a hidden, but tested vigor shook his head and laughed cynically. “If water is free,” he questioned, “why are we all buying it?” This was 1998. The American consumer, now readily paying money for something that was generally abundant and free, flummoxed Sociologists and delighted corporate bottling companies. This was a cultural crux perfect for analyzing late capitalist American, convincing evidence of our exponentially mindless consuming. A new need had been created – plastic bottles of untraceable water filled somewhere by someone else – and we were ready to pay for it.

Today’s trendy bottled waters did not, however, start out in plastic, but glass. Green, light blue and clear glass imported from the French Alps or Italian glacial springs filled with mineral laden naturally sparkling water preceded the present craze. These opulent products helped evolve a relationship between exclusive status and rare imports, one that is even more widely exploited today. (The best example being Bling H20.) Born out of locales where the public drinking water really was in question, they slowly became more common and profitable in the US market. At your grocery store, what was four feet of low traffic shelf space five years ago is now its own isle.

Sales have doubled since 1998 and as far as individually packaged beverages go, only soft drinks are more popular; so why the boom? We didn’t drink water from 16.9 oz. PET bottles growing up, so why do we now need cases stacked in the garage, pantry and refrigerator?

Obviously, we all need water to live. Only now it seems we need a specific brand of water. Here’s the message the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) exudes: Tap water is for the common, unscrupulous person. Its integrity has been questioned and faults have been found. The daily Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tests are evidence of its inferiority. Bottled water is clean, healthy, natural, and tastes the best. You buy a case at Costco for three dollars!

In actuality, tap water, being regulated by the EPA, is much more closely monitored than bottled water; which is not to say that all US municipal tap water is perfectly safe. Alternately, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) looks after the bottled water industry, and it’s a wonder more of us aren’t dead. Bottled water is not subject to anywhere near the same regiment of mandatory tests and evaluations as municipal water. Much of the testing is in fact voluntary and even that little bit of oversight is deemed unnecessary as long as the product is not moved across state lines.

Coca-Cola Corporation and Pepsi, producers of Dasani and Aquafina, respectively, dominate the current bottled water market. But before all the filtering, reverse osmosis and chemical flavor posturing, these products actually started out in a public water supply, not a pristine spring somewhere in the mountains. Coke and Pepsi are actually selling public water. So despite the minimum bottled water testing requirements, I’m sure they understand what a contaminated bottle of water would do to their profit margins. Drinking these particular products will of course not make you sick. They will, however, end up in your landfill and out last every living thing on this planet. Also, it takes more water to make a bottle of Dasani than is actually in the bottle, which is absurd. Unfortunately, convenience and the resulting profits neutralize irrationality.

Some would also call bottled water healthy, which in a sense it is, considering the corrosive and fattening high fructose corn syrup alternative. Yet ultimately it’s the water which is healthy, not the use of 17 million barrels of oil annually to make the packages.

The commodity is wrapped up nicely with what the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) tagged “a perception of purity.” Most of us do not really know what’s in our water. With all the world’s diseases, food pathogens and other health concerns, we’d like to at least believe that the cold plastic bottles of water now found in each and every convenience store are safe for us and our loved ones. Just like the health propaganda of margarine and the real butter scare, we wanted it to be guilt free and eagerly swallowed everything we were fed. It takes a long time to expose such authoritative chicanery.

A survey of the various bottled and municipal water watchdog groups turns up problems with both old and new ways of hydrating. Pharmaceuticals and poisons are commonly found in major public drinking water sources, and who knows what’s in many of the various brands of bottled water. With water now off the list of assumed health products, it seems there’s nothing left that we can take for granted. As far as food goes, our innocence has been lost and our trust broken by corporate food industries.

So what should we drink? Bottled water, a product of the loosely regulated free market, or municipal source tap water, a continually contaminated and cleansed natural resource? If we follow each option to its logical conclusion, it seems that the choice is ultimately one between private corporations and public governments, a curious position which has inspired me to tap my own personal artesian well. The bottled water industry, regulated by the FDA as a food item as opposed to a public need, seeks only to make a profit. Public water sources attempt to supply potable drinking water within a non-profit based framework. Both systems, along with irrigation and many other major public and private uses of water, rely on much of the same natural resources and will therefore always be at ends.

Becoming aware seems the first step towards healthy water consumption. Let’s stop assuming everything for sale is safe. And for the cynically critical, not everything is deadly, so participative decisions do make an impact on your and other’s health. If your local tap water is convincingly safe, try to choose it over the stuff sold in plastic. Currently only 1 in 5 plastic water bottles are recycled, so pay attention to your personal waste. Let’s question this bizarre system of single serving throw away packaging while simultaneously demanding clean water from our public sources.