NEW YORK — The July issue of Fast Company summarizes the state of what it calls our nation’s obsession with bottled water. It’s not an entirely kind review of humankind — or the bottled water industry.
Author Charles Fishman writes, “A chilled plastic bottle of water in the convenience-store cooler is the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture. It acknowledges our demand for instant gratification, our vanity, our token concern for health.”
He continues, “But when a whole industry grows up around supplying us with something we don’t need — when a whole industry is built on the packaging and the presentation — it’s worth asking how that happened, and what the impact is. And if you do ask, if you trace both the water and the business back to where they came from, you find a story more complicated, more bemusing, and ultimately more sobering than the bottles we tote everywhere suggest.”
According to a poll on Fast Company.Com, the magazine’s Web site, most poll respondents at press time said they drink bottled water because “it’s mobile and convenient to use.”
The article wraps up asking the reader to think before purchasing their next bottle of water, with Fishman questioning whether the value of a bottle of water equals “the impact I’m about to leave behind.”
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