Month: October 2019

I promise, this is a short one. But you need to read it. And yes, there is a picture of my dog at the end.

Okay, here goes!

Why you should never never NEVER buy a plastic bottle containing water.

• It takes beween TWICE and THREE TIMES the amount of water contained in the bottle to make the bottle in the first place.
• Most of us in the Western world have potable – i.e. drinkable – tapwater. What in God’s name might possess you to buy more?
• See those bottles of “vitamin enriched” water? You want extra vitamins? Eat more fruit and vegetables. Protein water? Eat some walnuts. Fruity waters? Mmm mm mm, love those chemicals!

Comparisons are odious

If you live near a discount supermarket, you can unfortunately bulk buy the evil stuff pretty cheaply. On mysupermarket.co, a bottle of Evian Natural Still Water (500ml) will set you back 60p. So it costs £1.20 per litre for a single bottle. Compare that with the average price of petrol (and I’m taking the low average here) which is about £1.20 per litre. Really? You’re willing to pay the same for water as you do for petrol?

If you buy your water from a kiosk or a fast food shop, you’re paying even MORE than that.

Paying double?

Yes, you pay twice. You get water in your taps because you pay for it through council tax or rates, and then you pay again because you buy it in plastic bottles.

Profit before people

The bottling companies take water from springs and aquifers, or underground layers of permeable rock saturated with fresh, or slightly salinated water. Water extraction on a grand scale is storing up all sorts of problems around the world. Just google “Nestlé water scandal” and you will find pages and pages of information. But just for a couple of examples, they’ve been taking the water from the land belonging to a First Nation community near Toronto, so much so that some homes have no water at all and must buy water in for cooking, washing and the toilet. Nestlé also continued to take water from the San Bernardino National Forest in California all through the seven-year drought. So the big question is – how good do you feel about dehydrating the land so you can sip water during meetings and lectures?

More pollution

We drink many English waters, French, Italian, American… think of the travel miles and the consequent pollution!

“But I recycle my bottles!”

Just because you carefully dispose of your empty bottle in the right bin doesn’t mean it isn’t going straight to landfill. Actually, it’s highly unlikely to be recyled. 91% of plastic isn’t recycled, according to the National Geographic.

Even if your plastic bottle does get recycled, it can only be recycled a limited number of times as the polymer degrades a little every time. Bottle caps can be recycled just the once before they’re recycled again into fabric. Then when you’ve finished with that piece of fabric, it goes to landfill. For ever.

“I’m dangerously thirsty!”

Dehydration? Oh, give me strength. You’re only likely to be dehydrated if (a) you’ve been drinking Mezcal slammers since last Tuesday, (b) you’re engaged in vigorous sporting activities. (c) it’s very hot or (d) you just floated in on the Raft of the Medusa. You do NOT need to rehydrate on the bus or halfway through a movie. You will live without constant slurpings of water. There’s an awful lot of nonsense talked about hydration, indeed there’s a total absence of scientific studies proving you need eight glasses of water a day. In rare cases, too much water can be extremely bad for you causing hyponatremia, or water intoxication which is very dangerous.

Enriching the bastards…

Every time you buy a bottle of water which you could get free out of your tap, you are spending unnecessary money making Nestlé and other companies like them even richer and more capable of raping the planet.

You know what? Give up bottled water and after a week, you won’t miss it. It’s not nicotine, you know.

And if I haven’t convinced you yet, how about this…

Or this?

Or this… spot the bottletops in the gullet of this dead albatross.

Almost there…

If you’ve enjoyed this post, scroll on down as there are quite a few more. And do please share with your friends and foes alike. Even better, follow – just click the follow button and enter your email address. You only get an email when I publish a new piece which is not very frequent at the moment as I am busy writing a new show for (and with) Fascinating Aïda. And I don’t share my mailing list with anyone.

So please do try and get this information out there. It’s so important that we start taking responsibility for what we do. It’s simply not good enough to wait for bloody Government to take action.

And here is the Queen Of My Heart…