It’s ‘ban bottled water day’ in Canada

Today, in the lead up to World Water Day later this week, it’s bottled water free day. I agree that, for the most part, bottled water is a large waste of resources. But I am less inclined to wrap it up in broader arguments about privatization and so forth, whereas others are not. I was thinking of a couple of good resources that came out on bottled water a few years back. They are worth a look.

The first is Peter Gleick’s book Bottled and Sold: the story behind our obsession with bottled water.

BLURB: ” Peter Gleick knows water. A world-renowned scientist and freshwater expert, Gleick is a MacArthur Foundation “genius,” and according to the BBC, an environmental visionary. And he drinks from the tap. Why don’t the rest of us?

Bottled and Sold shows how water went from being a free natural resource to one of the most successful commercial products of the last one hundred years—and why we are poorer for it. It’s a big story and water is big business. Every second of every day in the United States, a thousand people buy a plastic bottle of water, and every second of every day a thousand more throw one of those bottles away. That adds up to more than thirty billion bottles a year and tens of billions of dollars of sales.”

The second is a short video from Annie Leonard who is behind the “story of stuff” project.