I remember learning as a preteen that Evian spelled backwards is NAIVE. That day, I lost a part of my innocence and reverie with the goodness of the world. Today, my favorite irreverant environmental magazine, Grist, quipped "Evian Is Just Evil Misspelled."
Stellar headline aside, they have a point. 20 years ago, hardly anyone drank water out of plastic bottles. Today, they're as ubiquitious as the, well, plastic bag (take that and run with it Anya Hindmarch). They've made water drinking a whole lot more convenient – if you think turning on a tap is a hassle – but also a whole lot more controversial. Grist wrote:
"1.5 million barrels of oil go into making the bottles for the U.S. market each year, and oodles more to transporting the H2O…Advocates point out that water flows freely in nearly every U.S. home, while 38 billion recyclable plastic vessels are trashed every year."
Even more than the waste issue, some advocates like American Jewish World Service's, Ruth Messinger, say that by bottling water "at the source" in India, Brazil, etc., as so many companies claim to do, we are actually stealing water from those people who need it most. We have fresh tap water literally gushing out of our faucets, and still we feel the need to take it from the developing world? That's Evil Evian.
Finally, and here's the kicker to me, plastic water bottles have turned us into wusses! Take the marketing on the bottle of FIJI water I (admittedly, out of desperation) at a bodega the other day: "Bottled at the source, natural artesian pressure forces the water through a hermetically sealed delivery system free of human contact."
Oooh nooo! I can't have HUMAN HANDS touch my water! I shudder just thinking about it!" Talk about obsession with germs. Seriously, what happened to cupping our hands and drinking straight from the rivers? Oh yeah, they're so polluted we'd sprout a third eyeball.
Luckily Grist ended on a slightly more positive note:
"Nestle will roll out its water brands in a bottle made of 30 percent less plastic, while Nalgene has teamed up with water-filtration giant Brita to launch a bottle-reduction campaign called FilterForGood." Maybe this campaign will help Nalgene shed their hippie image and we'll soon see business people with caribeeners strapped to their briefcases?
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