H2O in a bottle

Dramatists will call this one of the biggest scam in social and economic history, and in this case I have a hard time disagreeing. Bottled water.

Really?

Seems to me this is one of those common sense things that people only go along with now because a)it has become ingrained in American society and b) the majority of Americans are too ignorant to really think about it. Consider this:

- The price of bottled water is 10,000 times the price of tap water.
- 40% of this bottled water comes from the very same tap sources that we all have access to.
- Bottled water producers are not required to test for e. coli, provide the source of their water, or even produce quality reports (this is because tap water is regulated by the EPA, while bottled water is regulated by the FDA).
- Enough oil is used in the production of bottled water each year to fuel 1 million cars for a year (17 million barrels of oil, to be precise).
- It takes 3 times the amount of water that is actually in a bottle to produce it.
- 1.1 billion people in the world today do not have access to safe drinking water.

Are there any positives here? Oh yeah, the bottled water industry takes in upwards of $61 Billion/year, and this number is only increasing. In the past decade, the market for bottled water has more than doubled as today three out of every four Americans regularly drink bottled water. This increasing reliance on bottled water is playing perfectly into the hands of the big corporations, as the World Health Organization predicts that by 2025, two-thirds of the population will lack access to enough water (and as a result, have to turn to companies like Coke and Nestle to provide).

Recycling alone is not enough. First of all, most people do not recycle every bottle that they drink. Regardless, even the bottles that are recycled are converted to a lower quality product that requires the additions of chemicals and other plastics. This is not a tough problem to solve. It does not take rocket science, it does not require any sort of monetary investment by the Federal Government or huge sacrifice by you.

Just use a goddamn water fountain.