Water is Complicated

Water is complicated. I recently wrote an article in my Monthly Frugal Fun Tips about why most people drinking bottled water should be switching away.

Of course, there are situations when you need bottled water–such as if your water happens to be toxic.

I found this AlterNet interview with Bottlemania author Elizabeth Royte on the water controversy to be thorough (considering its relative brevity), readable, and understanding of the depths of complexity.

Here’s a brief excerpt, a “taste,” if you’ll pardon the pun.

I just did a story for the New York Times Magazine about Orange County’s toilet-to-tap program, where wastewater is being reclaimed for drinking.

At first I wondered — if people know that they are going to be drinking this water again, it would be nice to think that people would take better care of what they put down the toilet, like would we switch to biodegradable cleaning products, would industry use nontoxic materials, would farmers cut their use of pesticides? Then I realized that is a false hope, because everyone is relying on the technology to clean it up, and it might even have the effect of letting polluters off the hook while we are spending $29 billion a year to run this very high-tech plant, and it gets everything out, so why should we bother. That’s the “faith in technology” problem.