My Gripes About Modern Life – Part 2

Bottled Water!

I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how it became this big thing that it did. Ok I understand that when I go abroad to certain counties its best to buy bottled water if I don’t want to end up with a major case of diarrhoea when I am travelling. That much I get. But how bottled water became this huge phenomenon in Britain in the past 15 years totally escapes me. To me bottled water is a con.

You get two types of bottle water

• Still

• Sparkling

And yet bottled water, by many different companies, takes up shelf upon shelf upon shelf on the supermarket. I’m sorry but these people really are gullible, yes mum you too. Water is water; it tastes remarkably like, well, water. How did we get into a situation where so many companies existed selling us something that we took for granted?

As far as I’m concerned Still water might as well come out of the tap. Sparkling costs more than still, as it has bubbles (carbon dioxide) in it. Despite paying more you actually get less water for your money. We breathe out carbon dioxide for free, the world has too much carbon dioxide it’s why we have global warming. Perhaps they should be paying us to drink it as a means of fighting global warming. I don’t know the effect that 5 billion people drinking water with carbon dioxide in it would have on the planet, could be positive, could be negative who knows, any scientists out there?

Seriously though, the BS that comes with bottled water is ridiculous. This water has been 150 million years in the making. It has survived 2 ice ages and was sourced from a hidden spring just yesterday, this spring formed after a glacier in the Alps melted over 50,000 years. For best before date see cap. April 30^th 2006.

The first time the Coca Cola Company tried to sell water in the UK they had the cheek to use the same water that Londoners got from the tap, and yes they tried to sell it to the good folk of London too. Unsuprisingly after a few months there was outrage and Coca Cola had to withdraw from the UK bottled water market. However after a few years absence they are back maybe they have learned their lesson and discovered themselves a hidden spring, who knows?

I happen to like water, its one of life’s little essentials but in Scotland there is really no real need to buy it in bottled form. The Scottish forefathers of Victorian times noticed the need for good clean drinking water for our cities. They also saw that Scotland had a plentiful source of water (it rains a lot), and mountains with good hard rock and many lochs (Scottish word for lake) within these mountain areas. In some of those lochs they had the foresight to build reservoirs. The hard rock results in nice soft water. The landscape of Loch Arklet that feeds Glasgow with much of its drinking water matches that of any hidden alpine spring, the water is so pure you can see the surrounding landscape reflecting back in the loch. I have pictures on my other blog as proof. The water is then cleaned further, just in case of any impurities, before it ever comes out of the tap. It tastes just as good as any of the bottled water so why pay for clean tap water and then go and buy bottled water? I just don’t see the point.

But then again I'm not a hypochondriac. Have you noticed that people these days are worried about everything. People don't even trust the local water supply. That amuses me. I admit I can be a bit perverted. I love that people think things are falling apart so much that people can't trust water. I love chaos and disorder. I love the fact that people are idiots. I love the fact that there are people out there whose job it is is to supply us with fresh clean water and there are other people out there who don't trust them to do a good enough job and so go out and buy water in a plastic bottle.