Water, Water Everywhere
Susie and I used to write silly short stories when we were younger. Oftentimes, we'd come up with a list of nouns and try to incorportae all of them into the story, no matter how peculiar it turned out to be. One such story, which we entitled Four Bobs and Brigham Young Til Showtime, was centered around a telethon to save the nation's supply of bottled water.
When we wrote about the telethon, bottled water was an oddity. Sure, there were bottles of Perrier around, but Evian hadn't really hit yet, and I seriously doubt that Coca-Cola had come out with it's brand of bottled water either. We did have Poland Spring water, being in Maine, yet it wasn't something anyone we knew bought on a regular basis. It was bought in gallon-sized jugs and stored in the basement in case of an emergency, and occasionally smaller bottles were bought for road trips. But little "Half-Pints" weren't around yet. (Why would someone buy a cup of bottled water? And why not call it what it is - a cup?)
Anyways, now bottled water is ubiquitous. I buy it myself. I buy Vitamin Water (though I don't really classify it as water) and I buy Fruit2O sometimes. Even though I bought a large Nalgene bottle last summer, I have been too lazy to carry it to work every day. In the summer, I froze it in the evening, and had a slowly melting ice cube to cool me off and quench my thirst all day. But carrying a bottle of cold water on a cold winter morning isn't something I care to do.
So I've started keeping a reusable cup at my office and drinking the tap water. Sure, it doesn't taste as good as the bottled stuff (well it does taste better than Desani) and I don't know why that is, but I know that I'm not going to get a parasite from it, so *it is drinkable*. And I drink it.
The Times has a very informative article on the different aspects of the bottled water business, that really made me think about this again and in more detail. Can you imagine how much plastic we'd save? And why does Starbucks of all places only donate five cents a bottle to the water charities its water brand, Ethos, claims to support?
I encourage you, lovely reader, to do the same. Unless, of course, you live in Port-au-Prince or somewhere else with unclean water, in which case, you're probably not reading this anyways. You're off boiling your water.
When we wrote about the telethon, bottled water was an oddity. Sure, there were bottles of Perrier around, but Evian hadn't really hit yet, and I seriously doubt that Coca-Cola had come out with it's brand of bottled water either. We did have Poland Spring water, being in Maine, yet it wasn't something anyone we knew bought on a regular basis. It was bought in gallon-sized jugs and stored in the basement in case of an emergency, and occasionally smaller bottles were bought for road trips. But little "Half-Pints" weren't around yet. (Why would someone buy a cup of bottled water? And why not call it what it is - a cup?)
Anyways, now bottled water is ubiquitous. I buy it myself. I buy Vitamin Water (though I don't really classify it as water) and I buy Fruit2O sometimes. Even though I bought a large Nalgene bottle last summer, I have been too lazy to carry it to work every day. In the summer, I froze it in the evening, and had a slowly melting ice cube to cool me off and quench my thirst all day. But carrying a bottle of cold water on a cold winter morning isn't something I care to do.
So I've started keeping a reusable cup at my office and drinking the tap water. Sure, it doesn't taste as good as the bottled stuff (well it does taste better than Desani) and I don't know why that is, but I know that I'm not going to get a parasite from it, so *it is drinkable*. And I drink it.
The Times has a very informative article on the different aspects of the bottled water business, that really made me think about this again and in more detail. Can you imagine how much plastic we'd save? And why does Starbucks of all places only donate five cents a bottle to the water charities its water brand, Ethos, claims to support?
I encourage you, lovely reader, to do the same. Unless, of course, you live in Port-au-Prince or somewhere else with unclean water, in which case, you're probably not reading this anyways. You're off boiling your water.