Bottled Water

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a hack right-wing industry group that puts out propaganda for some of our more wretched industries. Today, they take on environmentalists for opposing bottled water. It's almost not worth going into the breach and attacking them. But the bottled water industry is so loathsome and the product so worthless, that I can't help myself.

Unless you live in the developing world, there's no reason to drink bottled water. Even if you do live where you have unsafe water, there are plenty of cheap filtering systems, including just boiling it and then cooling it. So 99% of the time, theres no reason for bottled water. And everyone over the age of 30 remembers the days before bottled water. I remember when I first saw bottled water--I must have been 8 or 9. Somehow I managed to survive without it. The environmental costs of using massive amounts of plastic and fuel to bottle and move this water are quite significant. Nonetheless, for CEI, enviromentalists are a bunch of wackos attacking an angelic industry.

For the past couple decades, bottled water had been growing in popularity as an environmentally preferred choice and as a healthy beverage alternative. Yet in recent years, environmental activists have begun attacking its value and quality. The activists’ claims do not hold water, yet, based on those claims, they are promoting bans, taxes, and regulations on bottled water—taking the Nanny State to a whole new level. The following analysis counters this “new wisdom,” questioning the justifications for this new assault on consumer freedom.

The public has freely turned to bottled water as an alternative to drinks with calories, for convenience, freshness, and whatever other reasons they themselves find worthy. Misinformation spread by activists should not determine who can access this product. People who do not like the product can make their own choices. They should not have any right to make them for the rest of us.

Similarly, the public's embracing of canned meat products in 1905 because of their "convenience, freshness, and whatever other reasons they themselves find worthy" clearly showed why something like the Pure Food and Drug Act is just another example of a "Nanny State" placing unnecessary regulations on industry. Same with DDT and other agrochemicals. Oh Nanny State, when will you stop oppressing us with your concern for safety and waste products? Not to mention your unnecessary capitalization?

Via Grist

Bottled Water Sucks

Bottled water is one of the most pointless products we consume. It is often no cleaner or better than tap water. In fact, it not uncommonly comes straight out of the tap, including one company that uses the Houston municipal water system. It is expensive. $1 for a bottle???? That is more expensive than gas. For something you can get out of your tap safely for free. Plus, bottled water is such an invented consumer product. Nobody drank bottled water 25 years ago. Today, everyone does. Has our tap water become less safe? No.

Bottled water also has tremendous environmental costs. While some people recycle those bottles, most just toss them in the trash. Ashley Braun has a great piece at Grist showing the damage these bottles cause.

They take three times as much water as they hold to create. Plastics make up 11% of landfills and no small amount of this are bottles. Much of the bottled water is coming out of the Great Lakes (and what bad has ever been dumped in those?), literally leading to lower water levels. The plastic in the bottles comes from oil.

There simply is no good reason for people with safe water systems to consume bottled water. If you want to make a simple move to help the environment, stop using these bottles. Buy a Nalgene bottle instead. It's still plastic but you can use it endlessly. You'll save tons of water, oil, and space by doing so.