We Won't Stay at Claridges Any More.
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 10.16.07
Well, this TreeHugger has knocked Claridges off the list of hotels in London where we will stay. And not because rooms start at a thousand bucks a night; it's the water. In an era when everyone should be concerned about their carbon footprint, Claridges has unveiled a "water list" with thirty brands, the most expensive being "420 Volcanic", shipped from New Zealand and selling for £50 a litre, or as Andrew Gilligan of the Evening Standard notes, "a mere five million per cent markup over Chateau Thames Tap."
Claridges' Renaud Gregoire tells the Evening Standard that "water is becoming like wine. Every guest has an opinion, and asks for a particular brand."
Gilligan calls this a "High watermark of decadence" and notes "In blind tests carried out by a newspaper, one supposed expert described his glass of water as having a "fresh, sweet, lemony aroma." It was, in fact, tap water from a Birmingham public toilet. If you put a bottle of tap in the fridge for 24 hours, you, too, can savour the taste of Badoit."
Thirty years ago, it was unheard of to buy water in a British supermarket, and almost unheard of in a restaurant. Now it's an incredibly damaging, two-billion-litre a year industry consuming untold quantities of plastic, packaging, and fuel for the lorries which truck it to the supermarkets.
It's the ultimate example of unnecessary consumption, something we didn't even know we wanted until the marketing men sold it to us. It's a sign of decline in our public realm: the £1.20 bottles of Evian where there used to be drinking fountains.
The opinion of this "guest" is that anyone who orders bottled water shows themselves to be a very particular brand of idiot." ::Evening Standard
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Totally agree
When anyone spends that long on the graphic design and 'branding' for such a product.....you know that
a) what's inside is not as important as how you're meant to feel by the packaging
b) they know it appeals to the snob in you
c) you're being targeted because you have more money than sense!
Comedy! I'll bet you could make a lot of money bottling tap water and selling it to the rich and dumb. Wait a minute... they already do? Dang! Another one of my ideas....
Bottled air has to be next.
Bottled air is already here.....
They have oxygen bars in Japan where you can puchase a certain quanity of "designer air". I remember seeing the article and the hundred or so comments that went with it on Engadget about a year ago.
We sell the same water in the restaurant that I work in in Wellington (New Zealand) for NZ$8 a liter (about 2.5 pounds or US$4). Its not bad water but its not the best that NZ has to offer (antipodes from Poverty Bay is truly wonderful water) but its scary to think that I drink about a case of 50 pound water a month.