Charles Fishman of Fast Company magazine talked about his article “Message in a Bottle” with Robert Siegel on All Things Considered Yesterday.
Fishman writes that when an industry that supplies something people don’t need — an industry “built on the packaging and the presentation” — grows and thrives like the bottled-water industry, it’s important to ask how that happened and what the impact is.
Funny how as Americans we pay for something we can get for free while millions around the world don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water.
And I’m not pointing fingers – we have a case of bottled water in the fridge – as well as a Brita filtering pitcher.
Oh and here’s a great fact: 24% of the bottle water market is simply tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi. Dasani and Aquafina are the #1 and #2 brands of water and it’s simply re-purified tap water.
(picture above & below – a water drinking well outside Jos, Nigeria – notice the used paint bucket. it’s used to pull water from the well and to drink out of)
