In my October 15th thread, I raved about the ecological impact of drinking water from Fiji which is shipped to North America. I do not wish to target a particular brand because it is part of a much larger (and very global) problem. We, humanity, must break the bad habit of using the world’s transportation system to move water over great distances as part of consumer marketing.
Billions of people around the world do not have regular or easy access to potable water. As an environmentalist, I dislike the international bottled water market on account of its great contribution to air and water pollution. As a person who cares about the suffering of others, I dislike it even more because of the great inequity it emphasizes.
In the Edgewood section of Orlando, FL where my wife Catrin and I reside, curbside recycling occurs every Wednesday. If you were to visit our recycling bins next Wednesday and check our output, you would find very few bottled water containers and most of them would be from litter which we collected in and around Orlando. That’s no coincidence. It is because recycled garbage should not include water bottles from other continents.
So long as people die from drinking contaminated water, so long as people die in skirmishes over water rights and so long as people die from dehydration because they don’t happen to live in an area with abundant clean water, the importation of water from another continent just because we think it tastes a little bit better than our local water (or as a statement of financial/social status) is flat wrong.
Sustainable Justice For All!
Corbett Kroehler
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