The Ethics of Bottled Water

Personally, I'd rather trust a regulated but openmarket water ditribution system than a potentiallly corrupt government beaurocracy and it's attendant 'lowest-bidder' contractors.

In the freemarket, customers and distributors are responsible. In government world, noone is responsible.

Religion, schmiligion.

But these gals are on the right track as far as bottled water is concerned.

Adequate safe water for every single creature on the planet should be a right.

(I am disappointed that my previous mildly critical [ok potentially flamebait] comment was deleted, I'll try a gain with a question. Try not to scare away peeps not of your politcal persuasion OK)

I'll agree that bottled water where -knowingly- clean tap water is available is wasteful.

Given the world is still chock full of corrupt governemtns who don't respect all those other human rights we supposedly have, how do these gals propose to ensure that water is clean, and freely availabe for all?

How does the total cost of their plan compare with a privatization plan?

whoops...I guess there are server squirrels playing tennis with our posts. nevermind

In the freemarket, customers and distributors are responsible.

You have GOT to be kidding. How is it that Freemusketeers can completely disregard the history of business operating without regulation or oversight? Does the term "externality" ring a bell?

Ironic you're speaking about water. Plenty of countries lack a functional government, and it's usually those countries which have basic sanitation problems.

Anon,
Ultimately it is each individuals repsonsibility to ensure he or she has access to clean drinking water. One can pretend that the government will magically take of the water issue, and they will if they governmetn system is repsonsive enough; but only to the extent that doing so will keep them elected/in power.

Personally, I can't stand my local mandatory government provided technically-potable water supply; it is hard/mineralized, a milky color, and occasioanlly smells like chlorine. Yuck...I don''t want to pay taxes for that. And I don't see why anyone else should carry the tax burden for what I don't even want. The extra wealthy/politcally potent county south of me has resevoir water which is actually pretty good, and worth the money...why do people still bother there with bottled water? It sound like the issue TreeHugger has is with the wasted bottles...I reuse mine.

My local supermarket provides at 29cents/gallon truly clean drinking water. I am hoping to be able to afford a home where I provide all my water needs from rain collection, maybe a well, and/or an air-to-water machine.

Most water is not safely drinkable Clean water has to come from somewhere. There are costs for cleaning and/or delivering that water. Those costs aren't going magically disappear because some nuns say it should be so. The freemarket is quite able to minimize costs and provide value for it's price. It will usually fail to do so because of government interference and monopolization. Govenrments tend to interfere in such so they can control the water to control people; such as in a Hydraulic Empire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_empire

Try that for ethics.

And if you bothered with reading comprehension, you'd have noted that I did say, "a regulated but openmarket water ditribution system"; which means I am -not- against oversight of our water supply.

And those barely functional governrments with those sanitaion problems are also often anti-freemarket in one form or another.

Ultimately it is each individuals repsonsibility to ensure he or she has access to clean drinking water

Really? So the millions of babies who die from diarrhea every year should buck up and make their own sanitation and water systems?

And those barely functional governrments with those sanitaion problems are also often anti-freemarket in one form or another.

To the contrary, they are far more "free market" and unregulated than developed countries - typically speaking. It's a wonder why the Freemusketeers don't flock to these "paradises" where "evil government" plays little role.

Have you guys looked at your water quality guides lately for your tap water?

Mine had a gasoline additive, fertilizer run off, and a few other things in so called trace amounts. Then the lines are so old they are breaking in parts and making a new problem that causes us to boil our water.
To say i need a home purification system to take out the crap they put i the water would be an understatement.
And Yes I live in The US of A.
Water companies can not process the chemicals we put in it very easily if at all.
Think about it the next time you take a drink from the tap where available.
D~W

"Really? So the millions of babies who die from diarrhea every year should buck up and make their own sanitation and water systems?"

wow flame baiting and straw man...

anyway, a bit verbose for me, but pehaps this is better:
"Ultimately it is each self-responsible adult individual's repsonsibility to ensure they and their families have access to clean drinking water"

key word is 'ultimately'. There are of course many different approaches to this. Cleaning your own water is one of them; governement monopoly is the other. What I have been asking for is a comparison of the costs. Cause there aint to such thing as a free lunch.

"To the contrary, they are far more "free market" and unregulated than developed countries - typically speaking. It's a wonder why the Freemusketeers don't flock to these "paradises" where "evil government" plays little role."

Got any examples for us? 'Cause I can't recall any banana republic which is both finacially well off and corrupt at the same time; sometimes they get a little of both when there are natural resources to plunder, but they are never politcallly free. Otherwise unreguleted Freemarkets don't work when the corrupt governments and theiir cronies rule by fiat instead of regulation.

Freemarkets work best when the government is not corrupt. Monopolies, such as water districts, corrupt the government.

And I still want to know just how these nuns propose to make equally clean water equally free for everyone. Reality of socialist method shows us an Animal Farm, where some of us 'are more equal than others'.

Sam--I'd just like to point out that your base assertion: In the freemarket, customers and distributors are responsible. In government world, noone is responsible. is obviously false. At this very moment, governments are successfully providing cheap, clean drinking water to billions of people worldwide.

Of course, no system is perfect and occasionally bad things happen, such as the Walkerton Tragedy in Ontario (see Wkipedia). But in that case, there was a huge public outcry, the government was held accountable, and at the risk of being insensitive, this does not detract from the fact that billions of people are very well served by their government-supplied drinking water. Highly-regulated, openmarket systems also fail, as witness last week's Spinach/E Coli problems.

If you're not happy with your own water supply, then you're voting for the wrong people. Or not active enough in your community.

UncleRoy,
The Ontario thing is I think more about the paradigm of a centrally supplied system, and not so much who owns and runs it. The private company inherited a government system, problems usually ensue when this occurs. When the government ran it, it ran well but had costs the taxpayers didn't like. Better technology with a better paradigm could hopefully acheive clean well distributed water at a low cost.

Our ever developing world needs a better cheaper set of water paradigms.

wow flame baiting

From a flame baiter who comes into a thread about access to clean water with a proposal that governments shouldn't be involved in providing water to people and that everyone should fend for themselves.

Got any examples for us? 'Cause I can't recall any banana republic which is both finacially well off and corrupt at the same time

Who said anything about "financially well off"? Look at your own strawmen, my friend.

You're taking the standard "government bad, individualist good" meat cleaver approach to something which, really, has nothing to do with it -- ie, you're just coming in and using the topic of water as a springboard for some libertarian rant about the evils of government.

The point is, in reality (you know, that messy thing libertarians love ignoring), the places with the least regulation tend to be the most corrupt and hellish places on Earth -- many parts of sub-Saharan Africa being prime examples of this. And in those places, public health is abysmal.

Freemarkets work best when the government is not corrupt.

Well, again you are proposing fantasyland, since there's always going to be corruption and government regulation in this world of ours. Please discuss something concrete instead of fantasies which will never materialize (because they don't work).

The thread is yours. I have no more time for this childish digression.

"From a flame baiter who comes into a thread about access to clean water with a proposal that governments shouldn't be involved in providing water to people and that everyone should fend for themselves."

One. Neither these nuns nor you have made any proposal realistic or not as to how they wish to enact 'free water for all'. I was calling them on that.

"Who said anything about "financially well off"? Look at your own strawmen, my friend."

Two. You likely have a point. But you miss mine. Successful economies have low corruption and few yet well enforced regulations.

"You're taking the standard "government bad, individualist good" meat cleaver approach to something which, really, has nothing to do with it -- ie, you're just coming in and using the topic of water as a springboard for some libertarian rant about the evils of government."

Three. A common misconception of Libertarians is that they think ALL governemnt si bad. In truth they do accept government. It's Too Much Government they do n't like. Libertarians are anti-statist, not anti-government. In the absence of any plan as to how 'Free Water for All' was to be implemented, and statements by those persons about the alleged evils of privitization, there aren't many options besides a classic Statist model.

"The point is, in reality (you know, that messy thing libertarians love ignoring), the places with the least regulation tend to be the most corrupt and hellish places on Earth -- many parts of sub-Saharan Africa being prime examples of this. And in those places, public health is abysmal."

Four. Lots of people love to ignore reality. Anyway, it is easy to confuse 'regulation' with 'control'. Too much regulation can bring stifling control, freezing an economy. But tinpot dictatorships where the rulers get what they want by fiat, only appear laisez-faire. They are far from it.

"Please discuss something concrete instead of fantasies which will never materialize (because they don't work)."

Lastly. That's kinda what I was hoping to generate in the first place. "Free Water" = Wishful thinking. See One.

"The thread is yours. I have no more time for this childish digression.

Try not to have an apoplecptic fit next time someone mentions a 'freemarket'.

Alright, bottled water=bad. So, in the pursuit for clean water, what do you use? Is a PUR water filter jug a good idea? Seems you'd run into replaced filters every couple of months. Need some help.

Here:
http://www.reason.com/0603/fe.th.why.shtml
is a (Libertarian) article about why poor countries are so. I don't expect anyone here to be converted to the libertarian world view, but this at least gives some clue as to what the challenges are to providing free (or at least cheap) water for all, among other things.

Dear Treehugger staff: PLEASE RESEARCH AND POST AN ARTICLE THAT specifically compares the pureness and toxins between a few bottled water companies, a cross section of a few states public drinking water(tap) and the same public tap water after having gone through a basic pitcher filtration system. This type of information I think would be most valuable to the general public when making informed decisions going forward.

I think alot of people understand that it is way less impact on the environment to drink tap water....but they are not sure about how safe and healthy it is to drink tap.