Bottled Water
The bottled water industry simply put is one of the most amazing the marketing geniuses. In North America we have the highest water standards in the world yet it has developed into a $15 billion dollar industry. And there is no evidence that bottled water is somehow safer, indeed, some have been found to contain harmful things.
Something that I had not thought about was the environmental impact of all those extra plastic bottles, which was pointed out in "Should You Drink Bottled Water."
Indeed, plastic is made from monomers, some of which are very harmful and there are many additives in plastic to give it required properties, all of which can seep into your food and water. Container you use over and over have less because that which can seep out seeps out much faster when the container is new.
Truly amazing, a $15 billion dollar industry that was practically non-existent 20 years ago.
2 comments :
did you hear the BBC radio bit about bottled water a couple of weeks back? Among other good points they noted the irony that the countries with the the best public water systems are also the largest consumers of bottled water.
Segment also featured a bit about a Los Angeles restaurant serving tap water but in fancy bottles to avoid the "stigma" of tap water. Another restaurant said they'd never give up serving bottled water because they made enormous profit margins on it.
I did not hear the show.
What interesting to me was the article that I link mentioned filtering water at the same time it also mention the high water quality.
I knew about trans-fats in the 80s and it took the public and public media until this decade to figure that one out.
Filtering water can filter out important minerals and distilled water is actually corrosive. The gradient for it to replace minerals is very strong and it will leach them from your body.
This stuff is being sold universally and in Vancouver, for example, you might want to filter out the chlorine, but our water is as pure as you'd want it. Any minerals in it keep it from leaching them from your body.
Some places have very hard water and perhaps some types of minerals you do want to filter out, such as heavy metals, but calcium in your water isn't bad for you. That's a common mineral making water hard.
Some places water supply also has pollution from industrial processes up river that would be good to filer out.
That link does point out checking out your local water supply to figure out what is in your local water.
On the whole bottled water thing I am amazed that you can see it selling for the same price as juice or pop. No wonder the restaurants have high margins.
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