More on Water

Marina Hyde comments on the bottled water fad that has swept the country in the past few years. I have some sympathy with her points, but not all.

And yet – perhaps because bottling water is precisely the sort of business that would entrance Dick Cheney – we’ve yet to alight on the killing fields that would get us out of this mess. Not that bottled water giants such as Nestlé and Coca-Cola would class it as a mess, what with the global industry being worth £30bn and rising. For the rest of us, I’m afraid it’s time to swallow the bottled water lecture again. Come on: more of it is being sold than beer – you and I know that can’t be right.

Frankly, more lectures are the last thing we need. I’m sick to the back teeth of being lectured by various politicians and journalists about what is or is not good for my health. I’m perfectly capable of working it out for myself.

I tend to agree with Marina when she points out – as others have – that the stuff from the tap is perfectly good and we have already paid for it (no, it is not free, we pay rates or by meter). I suspect that the “huge environmental damage” is a spot of hyperbole – but for the Groan, that’s nothing new. This industry also provides work and therefore is a benefit to the economy.

In her book Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It, the investigative writer Elizabeth Royte covers it all: the nonsense about mineral water’s “health benefits”; the struggles of the communities from where this stuff is pumped in its billions of gallons; the huge environmental damage; the debunked science behind the eight glasses a day recommendation; the incredibly rare health scares related to municipal water supplies that are hyped by persons unknown (who could they be?) and drive people to purchase yet more of this stuff – supplies of which are dwindling. She fears water wars. She wonders how unworkably inconvenient it is for people to refill a reusable bottle.

Precious little evidence of what, exactly, the huge environmental damage is – although I’m presuming this is the process of bottling and transport that she is referring to.

As I discussed earlier this week, the eight glasses a day is a pile of poo and I tend to agree that the health scares regarding tap water are nonsense. I’ve drunk tap water in the UK and abroad with no detrimental effect on my well being. I’m not sure about the supplies dwindling thing – since early June plenty of it has been falling here – and if you own shares in, say, Buxton Water, I suspect your investment is safe enough.

Ultimately, though, if people want to buy bottled water, why not? It’s their money they are spending. As I’ve pointed out before when this subject crops up, I’ll occasionally buy a bottle of carbonated water when travelling – but Marina thinks maybe I shouldn’t:

You know who needs drinks carried round at all times because they may require one in transit? Babies. Mewling, puking, lovably helpless – and in blissful ignorance about the concept of self-discipline. In short, they have no control over what happens at either end of their alimentary canal. Perhaps the marketing men could reposition adult nappies, so that the same misguided urbanites could cosset themselves in one of those, in case they need to “go” while walking between appointments.

What a silly, silly argument. On a long journey, taking supplies of food and drink makes sense. As someone who cannot allow their blood sugar to drop too low, I make absolutely sure that I have some iron rations with me at all times. Equally, it makes sense to have something to drink on board, too – particularly if you are travelling during unsociable hours. Yes, I agree that clutching a bottle of water all the time and glugging constantly is daft and unnecessary, but to presume that only babies need or should carry drinks with them is equally so. Also, I can only presume from her dismissive remarks that Marina has no understanding of how crippling an over sensitive bladder or irritable bowel syndrome can be. If she had, she would not have made such a stupid remark.

One point Marina glosses over when she presents this as some sort of conspiracy theory – if you want to guarantee that the water you drink has not been chlorinated or fluorinated, then bottled water is one way to go. I presume a filter would do a similar job; but if you are out and about on a hot July day, then buying a bottle of water makes eminent sense.

Bottom line; if people want to buy bottled water, then that is their business.