Bottlemania

Salon has an interesting interview with author Elizabeth Royle about her new book Bottlemania, which dissects the bottled water industry from top to bottom. For Royle, it’s not as simple as “Bottled war evil, tap water good.” She recognizes that not all regions can get good drinking water from the tap (but most do), and she recognizes that most bottled water is not in fact “just filtered tap water,” as is commonly claimed (well, it is, but the filters used by Coke and Pepsi are more sophisticated than the home filters that consumers have access to). That said, Royle has seen the bottled water from the inside out, and sees a corporate manipulation of the culture on the road to making bottled water seem almost normal and OK. The idea that water from public fountains is “filthy” or not to be trusted, the idea that you risk ingesting pharmaceuticals or other toxins if you drink tap water, the idea that Fiji water (actually imported from Fiji!) can offset the huge carbon footprint of shipping water across the water by buying carbon credits… she sees through it all. Sounds like a good summer read.