redblueamerica.com

In most cases a person buying bottled water isn't purchasing it from a kindly old gentleman in Torrance. Presumably this hypothetical person is making the effort purifying the water himself. Large bottling companies benefit from having the water purified and piped to their property through publicly subsidized water mains from publicly funded water treatment plants. They then turn a handsome profit by transporting it around the country on publicly subsidized roads and selling so they can sell a product that is essentially just a container to carry a product around that you could as easily get from the tap. That product will eventually be collected by publicly employed waste collectors and shipped to a dump subsidized with tax money.

It is still just water, caught up in an elaborate shell game, and that's not capitalism. It's a corporation suckling at the tax payer teat.

Honestly, does water have to be branded, packaged and trademarked? SWEET JESUS WHAT THE F**K IS THE MATTER WITH YOU MORONS?

But I think we have the OBLIGATION to get smart about how we are screwing our planet... and stop filling every nook and cranny with plastics and other wastes... personal freedom must be with a conscious towards the greater good.

Now we are going to have our government dictate what products can be sold because their bottled in plastic? I understand the concern, and it needs to be addressed. Unfortunately, there are many other products that impact our environment in a negative fashion that are not regulated. Coca-cola requires 6 liters of water during its processing to make 1 liter of Coke. Many parts of the country, and world for that matter, are in serious drought. Should we now ban Coca-Cola for its negative environmental footprint? Why don't we just tell the government to tell us what we should be buying. They could put it all in one store, and we could line up with little chits to collect our daily rations.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to an inherently sick society

Banning something only makes it more enticing.

DAD: Who taught you this? WHO TAUGHT YOU TO DRINK BOTTLED WATER?!

SON: You! Ok!? I learned it from watching YOU!

DAD: Stunned look on face.

End scene.

Let me confess my hypocrisy upfront: When I'm about to hit the road for a two-hour-or-longer road trip, my last act -- while filling the gas tank -- is to buy a bottle of water. It's easy. And of course, convenience is a big thing when it comes to the market.

So I understand the appeal of bottled water, and I'm not interested in being an environmental bluenose about it.

That said, I'm still troubled by the excerpt from Ben's take on this issue:

It all comes down to one simple question: Who should we trust to make the decision of what products we can buy? Should we trust busybody environmental activists or individuals who pay the bills and must live with the consequences of their own decisions? It's a no brainer.

Framed that way, it certainly seems a no-brainer. Go ahead and foul your nest! I'm not going to stop you! Except -- whoops! -- the framing is wrong in this case.

Because, in the case of bottled water, it's not just individuals living with the consequences of their decisions -- it's the rest of us. And the collective consequences for thousands upon thousands of individual decisions shouldn't be blithely ignored.

In this case, the consequences are easy to spot: Precious energy resources are consumed to make the bottles and transport the water to market; the bottles mostly end up in landfills.

I'm not saying we should necessarily ban bottled water -- I suspect Chicago has the right idea in taxing it -- but that rather, we should examine the balance between the individual choices and the collective burdens.