I found this article while perusing the Fashion and Style section of the New York Times earlier today. I would love to hear your comments on bottled water. When my
child was born it had to be bottled water. I'm less worried now as I can't control
what she drinks anymore anyway. Water fountains at school, playground, etc...Now I
find myself going to the tap for our water quite often.





Robert Grossman
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By ALEX WILLIAMS
Published: August 12, 2007
ON a recent family vacation in Cape Cod, Jenny Pollack, 40, a novelist and public relations associate from Brooklyn, did something she knew she would come to regret. She did it on the spur of the moment. She did it because she felt desperate.


Bettman/Corbis
BOTTLED WHAT? To avoid the public guilt, you could always do what the Boy Scouts did in the 1940s.
Besides, the giant illuminated Dasani vending machine was just standing there, like a beacon.

So, with her reusable plastic Nalgene bottles dry and her son Charlie working up a thirst in an indoor playground, she broke down and bought a bottle of water. To most people it would be a simple act of self-refreshment, but to Ms. Pollack it was also a minor offense against the planet — think of all the oil used to package, transport and refrigerate that water.

“Something about it felt like a betrayal,” said Ms. Pollack, who otherwise does not consider herself an ardent environmentalist. She said she decided to stop buying water after hearing friends talk about the impact of America’s bottled water habit. And now she is doing what she can to spread the word.

“I’ve pretty much said to every single one of my friends, ‘Can I tell you my spiel about bottled water?’ ”

How unlikely, that at the peak of a sweltering summer, people on playgrounds, in parks, and on beaches are suddenly wondering if an ice-cold bottle of fresh water might be a bad thing.

In the last few months, bottled water — generally considered a benign, even beneficial, product — has been increasingly portrayed as an environmental villain by city leaders, activist groups and the media. The argument centers not on water, but oil. It takes 1.5 million barrels a year just to make the plastic water bottles Americans use, according to the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, plus countless barrels to transport it from as far as Fiji and refrigerate it.

The issue took a major stride into mainstream dialogue earlier this summer, after the mayors of San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and New York began urging people to opt for tap water instead of bottled.

This added momentum to efforts by environmental groups like Corporate Accountability International and Food & Water Watch, which have been lobbying citizens to dump the bottle; environmental organizations had banded together in several states to pressure governments to extend bottle bills to include bottled water. Several prominent restaurateurs, like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., made much-publicized moves to drop bottled water from their menus.

AND so people who had come to consider bottled water a great convenience, or even a mark of good taste, are now casting guilty glances at their frosty drinks.

Daphne Domingo Johnson, a life coach who also works for a nonprofit organization in Seattle, said she used to keep a case of bottled water “in my trunk for all times, just because I know the importance of water.” Ms. Johnson, 35, said she thought of reusable plastic Nalgene bottles — recently reborn as urban status symbols — as “just for backpackers or athletes.”

Now, after reading news reports about the debate over bottled water, Ms. Johnson said, the rare bottles she buys feel “like a guilty pleasure.” She helped mount an antibottled water campaign at work, posting fliers trumpeting environmental reasons why people should drink tap water instead of the free Crystal Geyser her employer provides.

She is not alone. In interviews last week with dozens of people on sun-baked streets around the country, former and current bottled water devotees showed a new awareness of the issue’s complexities.

Some have already changed their ways.

Melissa Frawley, 38, a banker in Atlanta, said she recently broke her Evian habit after news reports altered her thinking. Environmentalism, she concluded, “is sometimes an inconvenience to us all, but it is something I think we all need to do.”

Others who had not changed their habits were nevertheless feeling a new sense of guilt.

Barry Eskandani, 31, an administrative assistant in San Francisco who considers himself a connoisseur of water brands, said that lately his fellow Bay Area residents act as if “you just killed their puppy” if you dare throw a bottle in the garbage.

Bottled water has now overtaken coffee and milk in sales nationally, and is catching up with beer. To some, it’s an affordable luxury. To others, a healthy alternative to sugary drinks.

Regardless, many consider it a staple.

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Catherine Donaldson-Evans, Amy Goetzman, Kate Hammer, Carol Pogash, Rachel Pomerance and Paula Schwartz contributed reporting.
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Past Coverage
In East Texas, Residents Take On a Lake-Eating Monster (July 30, 2007)
Florida Is Slow To See the Need To Save Water (June 19, 2007)
A Man Would Lose His Land While Another Would Benefit (June 15, 2007)
Battling a Nasty Green Invader From the Deep (June 12, 2007)
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