Coke Says Don’t Drink Tap Water
April 13th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Posted in Blog
Coke's Desani: It actually comes from tap water
It had to happen some time. Coke and other sellers of bottled water are campaigning to discourage consumers from drinking tap water.
And when you think about it, doesn’t it make so much more sense to use a resource that should be free to everyone and instead package it in bottles made from precious fossil fuels that get dumped by the billions in landfills every day–unless of course they are just tossed by the roadside to wind up eventually fouling our waterways and oceans?
Susan D. Wellington, president of the Quaker Oats Company’s United States beverage division, which makes Gatorade, said, ”When we’re done, tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes.”
Actually, the corporate campaign against tap water, which includes inducements to restaurant chains to discourage customers from drinking tap water in favor of more profitable beverages, is old news.
What’s new is a movie called “Tapped,” a long-overdue documentary on the insidious evils of corporatizing and commoditizing vital resources such as water and making people pay for them. The notion of bottling something as essential as water–surrounding it in plastic and burning fossil fuels to transport it around the globe–may be one of the cleverest and most destructive deceptions of all times.
(In case you can’t tell, we are firm in our distaste for bottled water and the entire culture of plasticizing precious resources).
For a longer take on this and a link to the tailer for “Tapped,” visit the No Impact Man blog.
Ed, first, check out your blog, when I registered I was taken to the dashboard. NOT GOOD.
Second, folks should read Blue Covenant by Maude Barlow. Big Biz is literally locking up water and keeping it from native peoples in 3rd world countries. Are we next? Oh wait, we are the folks who put drinking water on our lawns and use it to wash out cars….WTF?
just fyi: being taken to the dashboard as a subscriber is perfectly fine. there’s nothing a subscriber can change or edit except for their own profile.
this post is refreshing in many ways. i’m a bigger fan of zero waste than recycling. on the occasions that i buy bottled water, i buy the 1.5L and reuse the bottle. my last bottle lasted me over a year.
This just makes me LOVE my free well water that much more! My water luckily is not too hard and not too soft, it just tastes so pure and clean. I wonder how long it will take the county to come along and declare my well unsafe, cap it, and make us start to pay. Probably sooner or later as my water becomes something of monetary value.