The Bottled Water Fairytale

My husband grumbles about how wrong it is to have to pay for water.  “Water belongs to every creature on our planet, it shouldn’t be a commodity that people profit from, and it’s all just bottled tap water anyway” – is his usual spiel.  “No it isn’t! It comes from the glacier fed pristine mountain-top natural springs  of …of…somewhere beautiful and untouched by man” is my highly intelligent come back as I pass the guy over the counter a fiver and get only a few nickels and dimes in change back.

So this post is for my husband.  You are right.  I’ll say it again, you are right and I should not have doubted you, wise man.  Lap it up because this may not happen again.

I’ve just discovered that my beloved Dasani bottled water, that I swore on my mother’s life, was glacier pure and sent from the magic natural spring fairies, is indeed just bottled tap water.  (You may want to be extra careful crossing the street Mom)

There is a small town in Australia called Bundanoon that has gone “bottled water free”.  The town’s website explains:

The Australian town of Bundanoon, in the NSW Southern
Highlands, 150 km south west of Sydney, has decided of its own
volition to neither sell, nor giveaway, bottled still water, within the
town precinct.
A meeting of about 20 businesses initially agreed to the initiative.
This was followed by community meeting in early July 2009, where
the packed town hall of 356 residents voted overwhelmingly to
support the initiative. It is believed, once bottled water alternatives
are in place — hopefully by late September 2009 — the initiative
will make Bundanoon Australia’s First Bottled Water Free Town.
(And possibly the world’s first.)
This small town community initiative has generated unprecedented
national and international media coverage and worldwide support.
As part of the initiative, Bundanoon is expanding drinking water
facilities in the town. Indeed, it’s anticipated that access to drinking
water in Bundanoon will be greater than before ‘Bundy On Tap’
began. Businesses will make available for sale reusable drink bottles
and chilled filtered tap water, whilst free filtered water stations or
‘bubblers’ will also be provided for the public and primary school
children.
‘Bundy on Tap’ was Officially Launched on 26
September 2009, with a special event, (which included the Australian
Premiere of the acclaimed documentary ‘Tapped‘)

It was after watching the trailer for the documentary ‘Tapped’ and perusing the movies official website that I discovered Dasani (bottled by Coca-Cola) uses filtered municipal tap water.  As does Pepsi’s Aquafina by the way.  Then they charge us 1900 times the cost of that tap water.  Bottled water costs more than gasoline!! I also learned that only 20% of the plastic bottles used for water are ever recycled and that it takes up to 1000 years for a plastic water bottle to biodegrade in the landfill.  Plus –  BPA (Bisphenol – A) is what those large 5 gallon water cooler jugs are made out of.  Y’all know the danger to exposure of BPA by now I hope.

Enough of my ranting, here is the trailer to the documentary ‘Tapped’.  Cheers!