Drinking water is essential to any lifestyle; a substance that humans cannot live a healthy life without. The water bottle business is an 11-billion-dollar industry, one needs to question why it is such a successful industry when one can drink similar water in the comfort of their own home. As best told by Charles Fishman, author of the Big Thirst, “the ownership and control of water is invisible” (Fishman 8). My relationship with water hasn’t always been a positive one, there was always a stigma against tap water, with the thought that it was ‘dirty’ in some way. There is an importance in considering implications of increased use of bottled water, especially because bottled water is the most dynamic market of all the food and beverage industry.
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This stigma is highly due to the issue of societal class when one holds a Perrier in their hands, there is a sense of sophistication, health, and self-care. Consumers believe that bottled water has a better taste in comparison to tap water, it is also perceived that it is safer and it has a higher quality. There are some individuals who contradict the belief that tap water and bottled water are similar. As shown through research, there is hardly any difference between tap and bottled water. Some say that because of increasing urbanization the quality of tap water has decreased. The World Wide Fund for Nature, a non-governmental organization dedicated to conservation, conducted research on the quality of tap water in comparison to bottled water. “However, bottled water is not necessarily safer than tap water. In 1986, an EPA survey of 25 bottlers showed that none of them had ever had a complete analysis of their water. Bacteriological surveillance was inadequate in most cases. 8% of the water tested showed evidence of some bacteria. Plastic bottles arrived at bottlers without caps in cardboard boxes and weren’t washed or rinse prior to filling, thus not respecting necessary sanitary precautions” (Hadeed, “The real cost of bottled water”). Even in our honors course, there has been a clear indication that there are no significant differences from tap water and …show more content…
Drinking bottled water has become an ingrained habit of many people’s lives, specifically in the United States. As we have seen around the world, and even closer to home, bottled water may even be a necessity in cases of local water contamination. There is no question about it, we live in a thirsty world where water scarcity has become an issue that our generations need to solve. We have seen that bottled water is not cost-effective, tap water and bottled water have similar qualities where one is not better than the other, and the use of bottled water is not environmentally friendly. The United States is able to improve this situation through the proposals that I outlined above, it is with hard work in Congress, the dedication of the public, and the teamwork of the nations that the use of bottled water will
This stigma is highly due to the issue of societal class when one holds a Perrier in their hands, there is a sense of sophistication, health, and self-care. Consumers believe that bottled water has a better taste in comparison to tap water, it is also perceived that it is safer and it has a higher quality. There are some individuals who contradict the belief that tap water and bottled water are similar. As shown through research, there is hardly any difference between tap and bottled water. Some say that because of increasing urbanization the quality of tap water has decreased. The World Wide Fund for Nature, a non-governmental organization dedicated to conservation, conducted research on the quality of tap water in comparison to bottled water. “However, bottled water is not necessarily safer than tap water. In 1986, an EPA survey of 25 bottlers showed that none of them had ever had a complete analysis of their water. Bacteriological surveillance was inadequate in most cases. 8% of the water tested showed evidence of some bacteria. Plastic bottles arrived at bottlers without caps in cardboard boxes and weren’t washed or rinse prior to filling, thus not respecting necessary sanitary precautions” (Hadeed, “The real cost of bottled water”). Even in our honors course, there has been a clear indication that there are no significant differences from tap water and …show more content…
Drinking bottled water has become an ingrained habit of many people’s lives, specifically in the United States. As we have seen around the world, and even closer to home, bottled water may even be a necessity in cases of local water contamination. There is no question about it, we live in a thirsty world where water scarcity has become an issue that our generations need to solve. We have seen that bottled water is not cost-effective, tap water and bottled water have similar qualities where one is not better than the other, and the use of bottled water is not environmentally friendly. The United States is able to improve this situation through the proposals that I outlined above, it is with hard work in Congress, the dedication of the public, and the teamwork of the nations that the use of bottled water will