(Photo: Free Range Studios)
Nearly 1 billion people
around the world don’t have access to clean drinking water. Most Americans, on
the other hand, have safe water flowing out of their kitchen taps 24 hours a
day, seven days a week.
Yet we buy billions of bottles of water each year at a significantly
higher price than we pay for tap. Why?
Annie Leonard, the creator of The Story of Stuff,
tackles this mystifying question with humor and insight in her latest short
film. The Story of Bottled Water delves
into the reasons why Americans are willing to spend thousands of times more on
bottled water even though it isn’t necessarily any cleaner or tastier than tap.
Leonard attributes this to bottled water companies
successfully “manufacturing demand” for their products by scaring consumers
into thinking that it’s safer and more desirable than public water. She also adeptly
explains the environmental impact of bottled water from extraction and
production through disposal without hitting you over the head with too much
info.
Leonard’s solution? Stop buying bottled water unless your
water is truly unhealthy. For those who want to do more, she suggests several
ways to get active from lobbying your city officials to bring back drinking
fountains to working to ban bottled water by your school, company, or city.
She ultimately makes an excellent point: Our money is better spent on
improving our water systems or preventing pollution than on dealing with the
mountains of plastic bottles we throw out.