↓
 

words and images

🇺🇦✏️✒️📚📔🌜dreamer 🌕 thinker 🌕 aspirant📱📷🚴‍♀️🏕🍄🌻

Menu
  • Home
  • Articles
  • Book Reviews
  • Letters
  • Photography
  • Poems & Stories
  • About Diane Schirf
  • Site Map

Tag Archives: environment

World Water Day: Buried by bottles

words and images Posted on March 22, 2010 by dlschirfFebruary 8, 2019

A repost of sorts, in honor of World Water Day.

Posted in Blog, Commentary | Tagged environment | Leave a reply

Planet Saver Sack

Planet Saver Sack
Planet Saver Sack

A lot of the people at Blick Art and Argo Tea have complimented me on this “Planet Saver Sack,” a gift from J. They probably wonder how such a frumpy old woman got hold of such a cool bag. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but now that I’ve seen the series I’m thinking I should buy at least one more.

September 11, 2009 by dlschirf Posted in Blog, Life Tagged environment, photo Reply

Buried by bottles

words and images Posted on September 20, 2007 by dlschirfDecember 14, 2016

I have a confession.

I am 46 years old and in reasonably good health.

And I don’t drink bottled water.

How can this be? For how long has the marketing for bottled water brands implied that pure spring water is the source of health, vitality, and long life? How ingrained has that message become in our culture? As I write this, six people at four nearby tables are drinking bottled water. With tap water available, most people raised on powerful, ubiquitous marketing and peer conformity opt for bottled water.

The underlying belief is that tap water is bad for you. It’s not “pure,” it’s not ancient, and it doesn’t flow from a mysterious mountain spring 6,000 miles away in a nonexistent, unpolluted paradise. It’s laced with unpleasant and/or lethal chemicals. How could anyone drink tap water knowing all that? Yet, unless you have foul-tasting well water or live downstream from a toxic waste dump, the chances are excellent that your tap water isn’t going to kill you or cause you bodily harm.

The perception that bottled water is better for you than tap water is pure marketing myth. It’s been perpetrated by marketing geniuses who saw a new, health-conscious generation with disposable incomes willing to pay $2–$4 a bottle for a substance that they could get from their tap for a fraction of that cost. Now they would no more drink tap water than toilet water.

How pervasive is this myth? At my [old] office, filtered water is available. Many employees, however, say they want bottled water to have and to hold. One woman pointed out that the lack of bottled water was contradictory to the organization’s touted wellness philosophy. “They keep promoting health and wellness, right? Well, how about bottled water? It’s hypocritical not to provide it!” She was so pleased with this logic that she repeated it to anyone who would listen. No one questioned it, nor did she ask herself why she was so focused on “healthy” water as she smoked cigarette after cigarette.

In fact, her entire generation has been raised on bottled water, accepting the purported health benefits, “purity,” and convenience without question.

The real price, of course, will be paid by a future generation, including the depletion of nonrenewable resources and energy in the manufacture of billions of disposable plastic bottles and the long-term damage to the environment. Billions of bottles used for a few moments are lying around, not biodegrading, now part of the landscape forever.

There’s a possibility our descendants may be smarter than we are and may figure out what to do with the mess we are leaving behind. We can hope so because this is what they face: Two million plastic beverage bottles disposed of every 15 minutes in the U.S. alone (Chris Jordan).

Posted in Blog, Commentary | Tagged environment | 1 Reply

Recent Posts

  • RANI incense cones
  • Backyard games
  • German Winter Nights by Johann Beer
  • Hungry squirrel and red-tailed hawk
  • Lodgings I have known: Arrowhead Lodge, Kabetogama, Minnesota

Top Posts & Pages

  • "I'd rather be slowly consumed by moss"
  • Everyday poetry: "Ode to Billie Joe"
  • Relics: Portable typewriter, Royal Sabre style
  • Maple Sugar Time at Chellberg Farm, 3/7/2020
  • Golconda, Burden Falls, Bell Smith Springs Recreation Area
  • Wopsononock Mountain, or Wopsy, in Blair County, Pennsylvania
  • Book review: The Collected Stories by Paul Theroux
  • The Pepperland: Prosaic story behind the portal to another dimension
  • Book review: The Way to Rainy Mountain
  • Book review: House Made of Dawn

Other realms

  • BookCrossing
  • Facebook
  • Goodreads
  • Instagram
  • LibraryThing
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Good viewing

  • Art of John Taft
  • bensozia
  • Bill of the Birds (no longer updated)
  • BrontëBlog
  • Edge
  • Karen Winters Fine Art
  • Mental Floss
  • Musical Assumptions
  • National Geographic News
  • Orange Crate Art
  • Sexy Archaeology
  • The Creative Journey
  • The Introvert's Corner
  • The Pen Addict
  • The Raucous Royals
  • Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
  • Woodclinched
  • World-O-Crap

BOINC Stats

Copyright © 1996–2023 Diane Schirf. Photographs and writing mine unless noted.
↑