Bottled Water and an Army of AntsLast night I flipped the light switch as I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. I doubt most of you do what I did next; I turned on the faucet and filled a glass with nice fresh water and drank it straight! No glass bottle, no plastic, no osmosis or filters, just an ordinary glass of water that came through the city pipeline from a distant reservoir, and I didn’t drop dead of some frightful disease. In fact, I’ve been drinking faucet water for all of my life, except now and then when I give in and foolishly spend a few cents for bottled water. Even then, I really don’t know why I do it.
Just think, people from Colorado buy California water, and people from California buy bottles of water from Colorado. We bring in water from Italy and France, from Maine and Arizona, well water, filtered water, spring water, glacial water, and who knows what else. We send it from all of these places to New York, to Los Angeles and Chicago, to stores in every city in the country, where people buy it and take it home, carry it in their cars and hands and pockets, and sip it all day long. We spend millions of dollars taking ordinary water from one part of the country or world and shipping it to another place, tons of water from upstate New York to Southern California and more tons from Southern California to upstate New York. Busy as ants, running hither and yon.
Oct. 15th Entry:When you consider how stupid most environmentalists are, it is enough to made your head spin like a top. It is my feeling that most of them are in the
bottled water carrying category. Think of the waste of fossil fuel trucking the stuff all over the country, criss-crossing the states, and you're probably getting water that is more pure than anything coming around the corner in plastic right out of your garden hose.
Yep, in summer we often just drank out of the hose when I was a kid. We drank water out of fountains in the park. Fountains at school. Fountains in public buildings. I never saw anyone drop dead from it. I never heard of anyone getting ill from public fountains. But look at the huge trucks, burning gas, diesel fuel, the ships that transport water across the ocean, the tremendous use and waste of time and energy in the bottling and transportation of water, while some poor natives in the hot climates of South America or Africa subsist on small amounts of water from holes in the ground, wells that contain minerals or chemical residue, or have animals using the same source for their water, walking in it, bathing in it, peeing in it.
