You’re thirsty. Imagine yourself plucking a dollar from your wallet, slipping it into a machine that slurps it up, and watch a plastic water bottle plop into a cache that you can snatch it from; Simple, easy, cheap.
Now think about where that water came from. “Spring water,” the plastic bottle dubs itself. The bottom of a stream must harbor millions of plastic bottles that catch previously freshwater; “bottled at the source,” you water may claim to be. That, however, is not the case. You know water is processed and filtered before it reaches your lips, and that the naturally occurring reservoirs of freshwater occupy a mere 2.5 percent of our Earth’s water supply. What if someone sought to control that water? We drink, clean with and watch water drizzle and torrent from the sky.
Our bodies are about 70 percent water. So theoretically, if one person were to reign over all our water, they would control a vital force that keeps us alive.Peter Brabeck is the former CEO of the Nestlé Corporation, which he described in translation from German as “the largest foodstuff corporation in the world.” Nestle rakes in tens of billions of dollars every few months, an absurd amount of profit. Brabeck thinks that water should not be a public right. He believes water is a commodity, “and like any other foodstuff it should have a market value.”
Okay, fair enough. Water is valued, and we live entwined with a monetary system.
The current CEO of Nestlé, Paul Bulcke, claimed that “bottled water is one of the most direct expressions of a healthy part of your diet,” on March 30, 2013 in a Telegraph interview. Bottles water is one of the leading pollutants that pile up in our oceans, and suffocate precious creature that call the water their home. Bottled water also seeps chemicals and plastics into our bodies, which are naturally unhealthy and potentially dangerous.
But the issue itself is not solely within consumption of water bottles. It streams out to their source, the methods of transportations and the factories that process the water and plastic. Water is taken from where it is abundant, packaged in petroleum based plastic bottles and shipped by gasoline-powered machines to wholesale companies that distribute the bottles for a relatively significant price. When you spend money, you’re voicing your opinion.
Imagine if you were to consume all of the water your body needs every day, an average minimum of 64oz per day, by drinking from water bottles. You would wind up consuming approximately four bottles a day, which adds up to 1440 bottles annually. That means you would be spending around $1440 per year on bottled water alone.
Those purchases will send your money straight to the power-thirsty corporate owners, and you will be funding a dangerous cause.
At the end of his 2012 video speech, Barbeck states, “We’ve never had it so good. We’ve never had so much money.” The driving force of the water bottle industry is to monopolize water, and reap profit from its production and distribution.
Your dollar is part of your power; pay for what you care for and you will be making a difference. Water should be a public right, not a heavily profitable commodity.
