Untitled Document
In a triumph of marketing over reasoning, the
bottled-water industry has turned us into conspicuously silly consumers. Controlled by a handful of global conglomerates, the
water industry has created the fantasy that if it’s in a bottle
it’s purer than what comes out of the tap. But wait — the EPA
stringently regulates the public water system, requiring tests several
times a day for bacteria and other contaminants, and these test results are
public information. The corporate bottlers, on the other hand, are overseen
by the more lackadaisical FDA, which requires them to test their water
sources only once a week — and the results are kept secret by the
corporations. One group that is beginning to rebel is one you might
not expect: upscale restaurants. Such places profit handsomely from
offering Perrier, San Pellegrino, Fiji, and other designer waters, paying a
dollar or two for each bottle and selling them for eight or 10 bucks. Yet
Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., and Del Posto in New York City are among
the pioneers who are foregoing this profit center, substituting free
filtered tap water or house-made sparkling water that’s also drawn
from the tap.
Why would they do this? Because they are part of a
growing sustainable-food movement that prides itself in using local,
seasonal ingredients for their menu items. Think about it: It makes no
sense to load cargo ships with millions of bottles of water, haul them
thousands of miles to our shores, truck them hundreds of miles to our
restaurants, then chuck the bottles into our overloaded landfills —
when the local public water system supplies perfectly good water, available
at the turn of a fauce. Just as it makes economic and environmental sense to
“eat local,” it also makes sense to “drink local.”
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator,
columnist, and author.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2007.
