Thursday, September 4, 2008

Bravo London!

Not, that is, the real London, but the pretend one in southwestern Ontario.

The city has voted to stop the sale of bottled water in public buildings where water fountains are available.

As I have written before, and lectured to friends, colleagues, and astonished strangers, bottled water is the enemy of humankind.

Yes, there's nothing like the pure, fresh taste of the City of Guelph

There is nothing quite so emblematic of the frivolity of consumers, the destructive power of marketing, and the greed of industry than bottled water, a tremendously profitable product that has successfully created a huge, lucrative market for something that is already available for free.

Where public enterprise has created an efficient, affordable, and safe method of distributing a product that is essential for life, private enterprise is trying to supplant it with an inefficient, polluting, and overpriced alternative that exploits and depletes natural resources.

As for the beverage industry's argument, that bottled water is a healthy alternative to sweetened soft drinks, we should take heed, and ensure that cheap, clean, cold city water is ubiquitously available, rather than being supplanted by arrays of vending machines in public buildings.

Or is that not what they meant?

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