Birds on the Brain

elledark:

The Great Bottled Water Scam

Its quite probably the greatest advertising and marketing trick of all time. This is the one that future generations will look back on and ask incredulously .. “Did they really do that ? Spend millions of dollars buying plain water in plastic bottles when they could just turn on a tap  ? What … were they crazy or something ” ?

The bottled water scam has been the greatest advertising triumph of recent decades by a long way, creating out of the public’s gullibility and need to conform a multi-million dollar market for an un-needed and unnecessary product.  A few interesting points the ad men don’t tell you :-

- Americans buy 29 billion single serving bottles of bottled water a year

- it takes 50 million barrels of oil each year to make the plastic water bottles Americans use and provide the energy needed to extract the water, refrigerate the bottles, and transport them around the country (and the world).

- bottled water can contain disinfection byproducts, fertilizer residue, and residue of pain medication. The latter gets there because toilet water is recycled back into the water supply and most public water sanitation systems do not filter out medication or drug metabolites.

- there’s already an area equivalent to the size of Texas of used plastic bottles dumped in the ocean causing serious harm to marine life

- a lot of bottled water is tap water. 40% of Americas bottled water is from municipal supplies and is no better or different to tap water. In fact its often worse because the plastic containers are harmful.

- water packaged in plastic containers has chemicals leeching out of the plastic into it.  Samples of leading brands tested have included traces of radioactive material, arsenic, and toxic chemicals.

- the staff at the FDA responsible for overseeing all of the regulation of bottled water in America is tiny. Tiny as in 1 until recently. Its a joke.

Really, to be honest, I doubt there are any significant health risks in drinking bottled water and in certain rare circumstances it might have some slight convenience value. Set against that, though, is the overwhelming argument that in most circumstances and for most people, it’s a total waste of hard-earned money.

Successful brainwashing by the ad men means that I doubt any of this will make much difference but do watch this video if you’re interested. Its informative and might just make you think twice before buying that next bottle of water. Or not.

Ellie

(Source: e-writing)