SuperFineShag

I’ve always been against the idea of drinking bottled water, though if you look at my artwork you’ll see i’m fascinated by the stuff (nothing wrong with a little duality here and there). But someone mentioned to me the carbon footprint the stuff produces compared to its usefulness and it provokes an important point.

Obviously there is an idea where we completely avoid producing excess CO2, but its still just an ideal, so its worth considering the value of any activity that produces CO2 as well as the amount that activity produces. For instance a single person in a car driving to a gym is a fairly daft use energy (run/cycle to the gym and save energy and money while doubling the workout). But a single person in a car driving a donor organ to a hospital is clearly forgivable use of energy.

So lets look at drinks/foodstuffs and their relative value. Transporting water thousands of miles by road from the French alps to London, which contains almost identical, perfectly clean water is not only pointless, but an extremely frivolous waste of energy. You waste energy transferring the water, which is by volume a heavy substance and so therefore take a large amount of energy to transport it. You waste more energy by putting small units of water in individual containers. Most of these containers will be thrown away and not recycled.

We think twice about plastic bags in supermarkets, but if you drink bottled water you’re using much more plastic and way more energy. Have a look at these articles:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0629-01.htm
http://lighterfootstep.com/5-reasons-not-to-drink-bottled-water-2.html