LETTER: Get educated about water

Get educated about water

To the editor:

    For those of us who remember life without bottled water, it is sad, pathetic, and frustrating when consumers spend money on water packed in a throw-away plastic bottle. The bottle is made from petroleum and shipped across the country – wasting more petroleum – and then 80 percent of the bottles end up in landfills or incinerators.

    Even worse, much of the supposedly recycled bottles are shipped to developing nations like India – wasting more petroleum in the process – where they add to the pollution problem. While consumers routinely claim to be immune to advertising, bottled water is a classic example of “manufactured demand,” using scare techniques and images of pure fantasy to entice buyers. Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coke’s Desani are simply filtered tap water sold at 2,000 times the price of tap water.

    Despite its advertising claims and images of pristine sources, Fiji water is lower quality than Cleveland’s tap water. Imagine paying 2,000 times the price of gas for your car. Yet consumers succumb to this insanity daily. Logan has some of purest water on the planet coming out of our taps. Don’t be a schmuck. Save your money and the environment; use a steel water bottle. Watch the eight minute video and kick the bottled water habit: http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/

Jean M. Lown