Posted By crates on July 2, 2008

Consider this unlikely scenario:

“Hey Joe, I have a fantastic idea!”

“What’s that Ralph?”

“It’s a sure money-maker, Joe.  We can take tap water, filter it, bottle it and sell it for a price several times higher than soda pop!”

“You’re nuts, Ralph!  People aren’t that crazy!  Count me out.”

     Ralph is now a multimillionaire and Joe is still working his old job, and still wondering how he misjudged the common sense of the American people.

    This has always been a puzzle to me also.  Now I can  understand wanting pure water minus any contaminants.  However our governments have spent literally trillions of dollars to make our water system one of the best in the world.   If you still want pure water, then wouldn’t it be best to buy a gallon of distilled water for about sixty or seventy cents,  instead of buying 12 or 16 oz bottles of “Spring” water and filling the landfills with literally tons of this petroleum based plastic product?

   I just read a article by Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post that looks at this phemenon.  I summarize the major points below:

A.  Professional sommeliers in Turkey and Paris serve different brands of bottled water at $5 a glass with flavors supposedly matched to different foods.

B. In Hawaii they drill down 3,000 feet for seawater which they desalinate and then sell (mostly to the Japanese) as “concentrated water” for $33.50 for a 12 oz bottle.  This “concentrated water” must then be diluted before drinking…you dilute it by adding more water.  I assume a different kind of cheaper water.

C. A company named BlingH2O in Tennessee is selling its water at $40 for 750 milliliters, with special edition bottles selling for $480.

D.  The bottled water industry is engaging in an intense effort to convince Americans that the water in their bottles is substantially different than the water out of the tap.

E.  Empirical tests have repeatedly shown that they are generally the same.  Experts say differences between bottled water and tap water are marketing inventions.

F. People who swear that they can differentiate between bottled water brands and tapwater can NOT spot the differences in blind taste tests.

G.  Some of the latest waters are from Anarctica and Iceland.  “There is glacier water and iceberg water and water that is a million years old…” 

H.  The purity of our tap water is comparable to that of this bottled water–at almost no cost.   And it is precisely those people in countries with the purest tap water that are willing to pay premiums of 1,000 to 10,000 percent for bottled water.

I. TONS of carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere each year to produce and transport this water from one part of the world to another.  AND then millions of plastic bottles end up in the land fills!

J.  For example, Fiji Water Co. ships its water in distinctive square bottles from the South Pacific to LA, Oakland and Philadelphia and then by road to the rest of the US.

K.  In 2007 it shipped 200,000,000 liter bottles of this water to about 1% of the US market.  This company says thats its water is “untouched by man.”

L.  The company claims that the business is “carbon-negative” (don’tcha just love these new buzz words) because the company offsets the greenhouse gases it produces by helping to grow forests and participating in other “green” initiatives.

M.  Thomas Mooney, senior vice president for sustainable growth at Fiji said that “Fiji water is different from other brands because it has a ‘smooth, silky mouthfeel’.”

In case you wondered…it’s all water.    

     Now I gotta run, I have this incredible chance to sell snow to some Alaskans.

Categories: nature
Tags: bottled water, nature