Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink.

I have a theory.  It's not really a conspiracy theory.  My theory is about the water shortage we hear so much about.   I don't believe we have a water shortage.  And the reason is because if you go to any retail store you will see cases and cases of fresh clean water sitting in plastic bottles waiting for us to buy what we can get from our tap at home.  That's where all the water is!  We are kidding ourselves if we think there is some mountain spring or some place in Fiji that is supplying the bountiful water for us to bottle.

Why do we allow this to continue?  Why do we keep purchasing this water in plastic bottles?  Because we are lazy and it is convenient.  We don't have to think about the insanity of it all.  We happily buy our cases of bottled water and think nothing of it.  As long as we can see the water in the lake as we drive around our city, we won't be convinced that there is a water shortage.  There's gallons of it out there.

Penn and Teller, a comedy duo, has a television show called Bullshit! where they explore various issues in a humourous yet thought provoking way.  They did a show about bottled water that was excellent.   It showed how easily we have been duped in to believing that the water in those bottles is mystical with powers to cure us.   How easily we can convince ourselves that the water tastes different depending on the brand.  One of the experiments they did was in a high class restaurant.  People were brought a "water list" similar to a wine list and were able to choose what type of water they would like with their dinner.   All of the waters listed had different qualities and came from different regions of the world.  They would order and then describe the taste of the water.  One woman was even willing to drink a bottle of water that had a spider in the bottom of it when she was told the spider had special healing powers.   And you know what???   Every bottle of that water came from a garden hose in the back of the restaurant that one of the staff was using to fill the bottles!  It amazes me how people will eat or drink anything if you make it sound classy enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFKT4jvN4OE

I could do a whole other blog post on Nestle and I might one day.  But let me just say that I am boycotting Nestle and all it's products.  Because they CEO of Nestle is an evil man who had the nerve to say that  Water is not a human right and should be privatized!   It's scary, really scary.  And as long as we keep buying the bottled water, and polluting our environment with plastic bottles, nothing will change.

I would love to do a symbolic act of rebellion.  It would be great  if I could get a bunch of people to buy a couple of cases of water, and come down to the lake and pour it all back in there.  I know it would not make a bit of difference...but to me it would be a way of saying, "we are on to you, we know where this came from..".   Crazy?  Maybe.  So far the response to my suggestion has been underwhelming.

Some places are starting to ban water in plastic bottles.  We need to see more of that.  We don't need to see a natural resource become something that only people with money can afford to have.