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[ 14 Valentines - Day Three: Health ]
Oh my god, is Maggie yakking about water security again? People, you should know by now that I never STOP yakking about water security. *g*
This issue is particularly angering for me right now, because when UBC was making its deals with Coke, one of the stipulations for getting Coke machines put in was that the university have NO DRINKING FOUNTAINS. Yes, when I'm at school, I have to either shell out for Dasani or Aquafina, or fill up my water bottle in the bathroom. I'm real thrilled about this.
But I'll keep it short and punchy today. Here are the salient points:
- "Aquafina brand water is actually nothing more than filtered water from municipal sources, a fact that the company will now note on its bottles. In fact, some 40 percent of bottled water, including Coke's Dasani brand, is water that it gets from the tap for free, puts through filtration processes, and then sells back to the public with a markup of up to 1,000 times."
- "It takes more than 47 million gallons of oil to produce plastic water bottles for Americans every year. Eliminating those bottles would be like taking 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere."
- "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates bottled water at the federal level, permits the product to contain certain levels of fecal matter, whereas the Environmental Protection Agency does not allow any human waste in city tap water."
- "Bottled water costs from 240 to 10,000 times as much as water straight from the tap."
- "Fortune magazine has touted water as the 'best investment sector for the century.' The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has said that 'water is the last infrastructure frontier for private investors.' The Toronto Globe & Mail has stated that 'water is fast becoming a globalized corporate industry.'"
- "Water requirements for a meat-based diet are five to ten times larger than for a vegetarian diet. Even modest shifts away from meat consumption will cut water demands by a third, or, better, allow the same amount of water to provide nutritious food for more people."
Water security is about more than just recycling your bottles. It's about all of the political constructions and environmental exploitation behind the big-water industry; it's about impoverished communities in South America being forced to pay for basic potable water; it's about rural India losing its watersheds to Coke-bottling plants; it's about the natural aquifers in the grainbelt of North America depleting at an alarming rate and becoming contaminated; it's about us being trained to view fresh water as a commodity that we should be paying exorbitant amounts for.
Potable water is not a commodity. It's a human right. Use a filter.
Oh my god, is Maggie yakking about water security again? People, you should know by now that I never STOP yakking about water security. *g*
This issue is particularly angering for me right now, because when UBC was making its deals with Coke, one of the stipulations for getting Coke machines put in was that the university have NO DRINKING FOUNTAINS. Yes, when I'm at school, I have to either shell out for Dasani or Aquafina, or fill up my water bottle in the bathroom. I'm real thrilled about this.
But I'll keep it short and punchy today. Here are the salient points:
- "Aquafina brand water is actually nothing more than filtered water from municipal sources, a fact that the company will now note on its bottles. In fact, some 40 percent of bottled water, including Coke's Dasani brand, is water that it gets from the tap for free, puts through filtration processes, and then sells back to the public with a markup of up to 1,000 times."
- "It takes more than 47 million gallons of oil to produce plastic water bottles for Americans every year. Eliminating those bottles would be like taking 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere."
- "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates bottled water at the federal level, permits the product to contain certain levels of fecal matter, whereas the Environmental Protection Agency does not allow any human waste in city tap water."
- "Bottled water costs from 240 to 10,000 times as much as water straight from the tap."
- "Fortune magazine has touted water as the 'best investment sector for the century.' The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has said that 'water is the last infrastructure frontier for private investors.' The Toronto Globe & Mail has stated that 'water is fast becoming a globalized corporate industry.'"
- "Water requirements for a meat-based diet are five to ten times larger than for a vegetarian diet. Even modest shifts away from meat consumption will cut water demands by a third, or, better, allow the same amount of water to provide nutritious food for more people."
Water security is about more than just recycling your bottles. It's about all of the political constructions and environmental exploitation behind the big-water industry; it's about impoverished communities in South America being forced to pay for basic potable water; it's about rural India losing its watersheds to Coke-bottling plants; it's about the natural aquifers in the grainbelt of North America depleting at an alarming rate and becoming contaminated; it's about us being trained to view fresh water as a commodity that we should be paying exorbitant amounts for.
Potable water is not a commodity. It's a human right. Use a filter.
