*Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It*
1 rating since posting on Friday, November 28, 2008
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By Elizabeth Royte Bloomsbury, Hardcover Review by Joab Jackson A marketing triumph, bottled water has been a tabula rasa for this country's flighty collective consciousness. We first bought Perrier for its snob status. Then, unjustly fearing the health dangers of tap water, we grabbed container after container of Evian, Aquafina and Dasani in some misguided pursuit of liquid refreshment virginal purity. We now crack open 50 billion single-serve plastic bottles of spring or filtered water a year, while only starting to consider to environmental impact of doing so. "The outrageous success of bottled water, in a country where more than 89 percent of tap water meets or exceed federal health and safety regulations, regularly wins in blind taste tests against name-brand waters, and costs 240 to 10,000 times less than bottled water, is an unparalleled social phenomenon," Elizabeth Royte writes in /Bottlemania/. She explores the repercussions of paying billions a year for stuff that comes out of the spigot practically for free. The book kicks off with a visit to Fryeburg, Maine, which sits over an aquifer of crystal-clear mountain-cleansed H_2 0, 75 percent of which—about 68 million gallons a year—Nestlé trucks off to fill Poland Spring-labeled bottles. Not surprisingly, some local residents are unhappy that Nestlé offers little in the way of payment, either for them or their local government. Equally unhappy are environmentalists, who note the plastic bottles are difficult to recycle—indeed the drink companies themselves will not reuse such bottles. /Bottlemania /really isn't so much a book about bottled water as it is a more general survey of the state of our potable water. Royte then widens the scope of her inquiry, examining the country's public water supplies. While she finds tap water is indeed very safe, trace amounts of new contaminants, such as the herbicide atrazine, are leaking in. And parts of the country are going dry. Tackling such problems may prove difficult as more people swear off tap water. "[T]o pressure groups bent on running Nestlé out of small towns ... drinking bottled [is] an affirmation that water is a commodity, and that it's o.k. for corporations to control it," she writes. To her credit, Royte isn't too strident in her assessments, sparing us the tiresome reading of shrill advocacy. She admits that when, away from home, a bottle of Fiji is a healthy alternative to a soda or sugary fruit juice. Still, reading Bottlemania can be liberating: Next time you're in a fancy restaurant and the snooty waiter asks what kind of water you'd like, you can boldly demand a long cool glass of delicious tap water. - Joab , posted 11/28/08 |
*Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It* was recommended for:
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