Adrienne Jerram

Adrienne Jerram

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Water, Water everywhere (and not a drop to drink)

When I was a kid I used to love a drop of Sydney tap. Drunk straight from a tap or bubbler on a hot day, there was nothing more refreshing. If someone had told me 20 years ago that I'd pay money for water (the same stuff you get from the tap) I wouldn't have believed them. What's happened in those 15 years to make water one of Coca Cola's top selling drinks.

Number one reason, a massive public relations and marketing campaign from bottled water producers has led us all to question the purity of tap water. The average bottle of water costs 2.53 to buy, compared to a mere 1 cent a litre to get it from the tap. Each year there is billions and billions of dollars of sales in bottled water. Think about it, and you'll work out that an investment of millions and millions of dollars in a PR campaign can quickly pay off. Ironic when it is estimated that about 30% of bottled water sold, comes directly from a tap.

It only takes a quick stroll along the banks of the Cooks river at low tide to see the effect all this bottled water drinking is having on our environment. I would estimate that 60% of the rubbish in the river is from discarded water bottles. ** It's sad to note that these bottles will take more than 1000 year to degrade.

So, for both the environment and my hip pocket, I've decided to rediscover my inner child and go back to loving a drop of Sydney tap.


** Curiously the remaining 40% seems to be rusting shopping trolleys. I m not, however advocating for the end to the shopping trolley, that would be too much.

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