(I have made many blog posts about this topic, but felt the need today to make more of a consolidated compilation. Hope you find this helpful in your efforts to shift the thinking & practice in your community!)
Regarding why I refuse bottled water unless it is an absolute emergency.
This is a very important topic, and some people recently have seemed baffled when I declined offers of bottled water. So I’m going to share some of the best public information that I know of.
This has all been out there for a long time, so I assumed everyone knew it. But, it’s a big world out there and there’s a lot of information for us to try to keep track of. See various links below and in the comments.
If you ever see me drink a bottle of bottled water, you are welcome to ask me if I’m OK, because it might literally be a medical emergency.
Most recently, I drank a couple of bottles of bottled water back in 2020, at a daytime event in midsummer where I was volunteering and I noticed I had started to experience symptoms of heat exhaustion. After searching extensively for a working faucet or water fountain to refill my cup and not finding anything, I finally gave up and drank two bottles of bottled water.
Still, I felt bad about accepting the bottled water, and was very angry with myself. I could have planned better, brought a bigger jug of water from home.
A fellow civic activist, who is also a fellow environmentally concerned citizen, commented on my post:
“I remember life before the cult of bottled water, before adults went around sucking on bottles of water like over grown toddlers. Yes, I understand the need to stay hydrated and the bottled water trend is here to stay but so is my mental image of over grown toddlers sucking on their bottles. Sometimes I even imagine them in cute little Oshkosh B’Gosh overalls. Makes my world more fun.”
To which I responded:
Yes, so true and so well put! And — Saying that the plastic trash bottled water trend is here to stay is a self-defeating attitude. It’s the same kind of defeatist mentality we have often lamented in our fellow Boomers, that everything is just doomed to stay the way it is even though we are killing the planet, oh well.
Isn’t it funny how the generation with the most money and resources IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF HUMANKIND is the one that just lays down and plays dead and claims helplessness over environmental and social problems? Hmmm …
The fact is: More and more people these days are conscientiously carrying their own reusable bottles. And, furthermore, we are deriving great self-expressive enjoyment from it, so I would say THIS trend is here to stay!
At a gathering the other week outdoors in a park, a couple of very glamorous ladies were toting those very large Stanley cups full of some kind of delicious beverage, and their cups that matched their gorgeous nails and stylish outfits were just very eye-catching!
People like you and me, who get out and about a lot, are in a great position of influence! I so enjoy carrying my cute reusable containers and utensils and beautiful heirloom cloth napkins from my childhood! #fashionplanet
We are stylish grown-up ladies, we don’t have to be part of the herd of overgrown toddlers!
Further exploration/action:
• If you don’t watch or read anything else, PLEASE PLEASE just watch this 8-minute video. She really sums things up. The Story of Bottled Water, by Annie Leonard (originator of the popular acclaimed series “The Story Of Stuff”)
• Please don’t assume that all these bottles are getting recycled. It’s very much the opposite. Google search: bottled water trash
• On a sidenote, when I was living in Tokyo and had an evening side-job at a karaoke snack pub in Shibuya, we got the water by refilling glass bottles with tap-water, and served that to customers. I’m pretty sure every karaoke snack probably did and does the same thing still. At least I hope so, I hope a bunch of them haven’t converted to single use plastic!
• There are communities that actually have a dangerous water supply. Flint, Michigan, is just one example. And the mining communities in West Virginia. When we drink bottled water just for convenience or as a status symbol, we are actually throwing those communities under the bus. Let’s step it up and push for REAL solutions!! As Annie Leonard says in her story of bottled water video linked above, the real solutions are: invest in public water infrastructure; prevent pollution; [install & use] drinking fountains; and boycott bottled water.
• If you for some reason just feel a compulsion to spend money on plastic bottles of water, please buy it for someone who NEEDS it. Here is a Facebook page where you can go to bid on their handmade jewelry etc and the money will be donated to buy bottles of water for workers and families in the coal camps of West Virginia. Where the water and land has been hideously poisoned by our endless consumerist capitalist demand for “cheap energy on tap.” Follow this Facebook page: Marked Melungeon Company Store.
• Regarding recycling: “Americans buy 29 billion water bottles a year. For every six bottles people buy, only one is recycled. … U.S. landfills are overflowing with 2 million tons of discarded water bottles.” And it takes up to 1,000 years for one bottle to decompose.(healthyhumanlife.com) Numerous other websites report similar figures, or even worse.