In a long, thoughtful and fascinating feature on bottled water at Fast Company this month, Charles Fishman leads us through "A journey into the economics--and psychology--of an unlikely business boom. And what it says about our culture of indulgence." It's a journey into environmental and cultural impacts too.
And in Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water. Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji.
While we're on the subject, check out The Real Cost of Bottled Water by Jared Blumenfeld and Susan Leal.
Just supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, enough to take 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
You get the idea. Food for thought, so to speak.