A new reason to stop drinking bottled water: Recession

A recent USA Today story headline: Feeling thrifty, the thirsty reach for tap, not bottle

With a day's worth of bottled water — the recommended 64 ounces — costing hundreds to thousands of dollars a year depending on the brand, more people are opting to drink water that comes straight from the sink.

The lousy economy may be accomplishing what environmentalists have been trying to do for years: wean people off the disposable plastic bottles of water that were sold as stylish, portable, healthier and safer than water from the tap.

We'd rather not see our fellow citizens' suffering be the reason for positive change in social behavior.  But if we want to see real change, we will need a political and economic framework for understanding how we can make change, and not just react to circumstances.

The USA Today article goes on:

Measured in 700-milliliter bottles of Poland Spring, a daily intake of water would cost $4.41, based on prices at a CVS drugstore in New York. Or $6.36 in 20-ounce bottles of Dasani. By half-liters of Evian, that'll be $6.76. All of which adds up to thousands a year.

Even a 24-pack of half-liter bottles at Costco Wholesale, a bargain at $6.97, would be consumed by one person in six days. That's more than $400 a year.

Compared to water from the tap? A little more than 0.001 cent for a day's worth of water. Based on averages from an American Water Works Association survey, that's just about 51 cents a year.

U.S. consumers spent $16.8 billion on bottled water in 2007, according to the trade publication Beverage Digest, up 12% from the year before. Yet it was the lowest growth rate since the early 1990s, said editor John Sicher.

 People will make decisions about consumption based on the cost of bottled water compared to the virtually free alternative that tap water provides, and that is inarguably a good thing. But we still need an economic framework that takes into account the true costs of commodities, and values both the natural resources from which they come and the downstream waste costs their consumption requires.  More than that, we need to restore the notion of "public good" and stop believing the lies that all private enterprise is good and all public activity somehow suspect.  After all, whose interests does that mythology serve?

costco waterEven bottled water at Costco, a bargain at $6.97, costs more than $400 a year, compared to tap water, which costs about 51 cents a year.