If
you want to be eco-conscious about your drinking water, get it from the tap.
By
NO IT'S NOT! Boxed water is stupid! |
Boxed
water?
OK,
I’ve heard of boxed wine — and maybe even drunk a little. But water?
The
yoga studio in question appeals to a young, wealthy, presumably eco-conscious
demographic. As the skinny, beautiful clients file into the heated room with
their yoga mats, they pass a refrigerator case of boxed water and a sign
proclaiming its environmental benefits.
These
supposed benefits come from packaging water in a box instead
of a plastic bottle. Plastic is bad for the planet, after all, and milk
carton-style boxes don’t have the BPA and other estrogenic chemicals that you can ingest by drinking
plastic-stored liquids.
I
don’t know which genius figured that the best way to fix the problems of
bottled water is to package it in boxes. But I’ve got an even better idea:
drink tap water in reusable water bottles.
Think
all the way back to, I don’t know, 1985.
Back
then, the only bottled water readily available was that Perrier stuff. Nobody I
knew drank it. We weren’t poor, but throwing money away on fancy French water
seemed ridiculous when water came out of the tap for free.
I’d
have been taking an aerobics class instead of yoga, no doubt. Complete with
sweatbands and leg warmers. And if anyone wanted to drink water during the
class, they’d either bring a reusable water bottle from home or just drink from
the drinking fountain.
Bringing
your own bottle takes a little bit of extra planning, and an initial investment
— I’m attached to my stainless steel Klean Kanteen — but after that it’s free.
Using
the drinking fountain requires no planning and costs nothing. It might involve
the extra “hassle” of lining up for a drink.
Are
these drawbacks so insurmountable that the only way we can imagine ditching
bottled water is by consuming it out of disposable boxes that wind up in
landfills?
There’s
one other problem with bottled water that has nothing at all to do with the
bottle. It has to do with the water.
Do
you have any idea where the water in bottled water comes from?
Some
brands, like Starbucks’ Ethos, bottle up California’s dwindling water supply and sell it around the country at a
profit. Arrowhead, Crystal Geyser, Dasani, and Aquafinaall source water from California, too.
Drought-stricken
California loses its water, and the American public pays for something it
should get for free out of the tap. That’s a pretty bad deal for everyone
except the bottled water companies.
It’s
especially galling when you consider that nearly half of all the bottled stuff is just
filtered tap water, anyway.
So,
yuppies at the yoga studio — and everyone else — there is a way to reduce your bottled water
environmental footprint. It’s by swapping out the water, not the container.
Please drink outside the box.
OtherWords
columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our
Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. OtherWords.org.