Quote of the Day: Garrison Keillor on Bottled Water
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 11.20.07
I am sorry, Evian and San Pellegrino and Dasani and all the other bottled waters out there—Aqua Velva, Wells Fargo, Muddy Waters, Joan Rivers, Jerry Springer, whatever—but the current campaign against paying good money for bottled water when tap water is perfectly good (and very likely purer) is so sensible on the face of it that I am now done with you.
Fini. Kaput. Ausgeschlossen. No more designer water. Water is water. If you want lemon flavoring, add a slice of lemon. You want bubbles, stick a straw in it and blow.
My father, a true conservative, would have smiled on this. All his life he resisted the attempts of big corporations to gouge him by selling him stuff he didn’t need and so he was not a consumer of high-priced water, anymore than he would’ve purchased bottles of French air or Italian soil.
No, San Pellegrino and Perrier got rich off the pretensions of liberal wastrels like moi who thought it set us apart from the unlettered masses. We ordered it in restaurants for the same reason we read books we don’t like and go to operas we don’t understand - we say to the waiter, ”Perrier,” to give a continental touch to our macaroni and cheese.
Enough. Man is capable of reform once presented with the facts, and the fact is that bottling water and shipping it is a big waste of fuel, so stop already. The water that comes to your house through a pipe is good enough, and maybe better."
—Garrison Keillor in a Sept. 29, 2007 in the Salt Lake Tribune
Unfortunately, I must buy bottled water. Becasue of past overuse of pesticides in this area, my well isn't drinkable. But I reuse my containers and go to one of the RO'ed water dispensers at walmart. I pay $.63/USgal for it that way. I wish there was some other way, but not even reverse osmosis is rated to take some of this stuff out of the water.
You won't see me buying bottled water by the liter, however. Terrible waste of plastic.
nail on head!
You should be able to drink the water from your tap, and it should taste good.
If you can't or it doesn't, then you should do something about it - by confronting your town or water company and making them improve the quality.
Access to safe, clean drinking water is a basic human right. To accept less is to cooperate in the despoiling of the environment.
Wonderful post. Keilor is pitch perfect. He omitted containers, packaging and advertising issues, and you can easily carbonate water at home or in a restaurant, but what a pithy burst!
Well said! I am so relieved people are waking up to this gross abuse of resources. I really hope all restaurants cease offering bottled water and just invest in filters for the tap water if need be. I have always eschewed bottled water. For one thing, I knew plastic leaches. Anyone who says the contrary has no functioning taste buds. I loved the part in the article about the pretentious person requesting "Perrier" from the waiter, etc. Just the other night, my partner and I (we live in Ireland--I'm American and he's Irish) were groaning as a very loud American at a nearby table was nearly shouting all during our meal regarding physics. He kept name-dropping obnoxiously about "Cornell" and "Princeton" and we felt more annoyed by the minute. When he asked pointedly for a "Perrier", we nearly choked on our TAP water and we just smiled at the confirmation that he was an absolute jerk for sure.
So where in Minnesota is the tap water carbonated?
Amen, Mr. Keillor! I have been bothered by the problems of waste associated with the bottled water industry for a long time. My wife is picky about water, so she uses the Brita water filter pitcher. I drink it straight out of the tap and it's great!
Pellegrino? Perrier? These are beverages, like soda and coffee. I think the bottled water issue is the "plastic bottle" water.
So, if using and DRINKING toxic chemicals is "good enough" for you folks...Bottoms-up! I'll toast to that with my chlorine free water - I don't want to see a bunch of plastic bottles shipped across the country/ocean either.
But do yourself a favor: Google the dangers of chlorine in tap water and the environment. You came here to learn, right?
I used a high quality filter when I lived in LA and had no problem drinking the water. Then I moved to the Texas-Mexico border... now my trusted filter is nearly useless!
I never dreamed I would move away from a highly polluted city and THEN be forced to switch to bottled to tolerate the taste of water! I don't own the well or the land I'm on, so I can't do much about that, but if anyone can tell me something else to try I'd love to stop stockpiling all these empty bottles!
Way to go Treehugger! I read your sometimes wonderful insightfull stories yet I can not get over the fact that your midless robotic advertising on the side of the page that puts up ads in regards to the words on the page so while you are touting off about how stupid bottled water is and all the damage it creates you are simutaneously advertising for bottled water companies!!!!!
Is Treehugger just another green washing venue to be discarded like a piece of heavly printed junk mail??
COME ON TREEHUGGER!! GET WITH IT! HOW ABOUT SOME HUMAN INTERACTION with some common sense!!!
If I'm home, a good counter top carbon filter is a great way to drink tap water without getting poisoned by the chlorine the city puts in there to keep me from getting cholera.
If I am away from home, I try and bring a gallon jug with me from home.
If I don't have my gallon jug, and I'm away from home I will buy a bottle of water if I'm thirsty.
But I drink bottled water all the time! At the college I have this nice, recycled, glass bottle. I fill it up from the filter we installed on the faculty sink, put it in my fridge, and then drink bottled water. I LIKE my bottled water. It goes to class w/ me. It lets me explain how my bottled water is different from the students fancy bottled water. Bottled water is good stuff, well, MY bottled water is good stuff :-)
I've heard that letting your chlorinated tap water sit for 24 hours, without a lid, allows the chlorine to dissipate. Has anyone ever heard of this or does anyone know if this really works?
My tap water is okay to me other than that chlorine flavor so I do use a filter which is supposed to remove that flavor, but this little trick, if it works, may help if one chooses not to use a filter.
Susan:
It seems to me the jpke is on the bottled water advertisers if they are paying to get their ads on a page that is dissing bottled water.
To anonymous with the seriously bad water on the Tex-mex border:
A larger under-sink filter is far better than a brita pitcher or such. But if your water is too troubled for even that, reverse osmosis may be the way to go.
The whole discussion here assumes tapwater is drinkable. This was my assumption too but shouldnt we be concerned about water quality too. We cannot discuss this idea without addressing problems of water quality. Anywhere there is a coal-fired power plant nearby (which is pretty much most places in the world), mercury is probably released into the air at rates that we dont know about. This mercury finds its way into the water. So if we want good water quality for our kids especially, with increasing number of coal power plants being built, we need to better understand water quality.
As I recall, fish tank owners were told to set
their chlorinated tap water aside for twelve hours
to let the chlorine dissipate. Could we hear from a chemist who has the correct timing on this ?
In vain, I have tried to convince dogowners that
NOT changing the water in their dog's bowl every
day is healthier because by then the chlorine has
dispersed. I give my dog filtered water along
with 8 Brewer's Yeast tabs, 200 units Vit. E, and a multi-vitamin pill and his seizues have stopped.
Coincidental ? Quien sabe ?
I recently bought the April edition of ELLE magazine, South Africa, because of cover-lines that sold it as being the 'energy issue'. I went straight to the section called 'ELLEGREEN- 10 pages of eco-information that will make you turn green' and couldn't believe what I was seeing when the first add within the green section was for Evian!
I did a coarse on water filters for dental units and let me tell you the things found in your every day average tap water go from harmful bacteria’s and parasites to pesticides and antibiotics. It is not safe to drink water strait from the tap unless you live somewhere like San Francisco. But you can easily remedy this by adding a filter unit in your home. This will mean you can have clean water from your tap and you do not have to buy bottled water wasting so much plastic.
Also, I am guilty of liking carbonated mineral water. It might not be healthy but its so fun. Only naturally carbonated though. =)