The bottled water debate continues

Maybe my last post leant towards the “consumer choice rule OK” philosophy. Actually, I think that sometimes too much choice is a bad thing.

No one can condone shipping water from Fiji and away from the people who live there….and if you are of the mindset to pay twenty quid for a bottle of water, you need help, perhaps you should think of giving some cash to charity, try doing something useful with it.

Nevertheless, I still stand by the fact that drinking bottled water that has come from Wales, Scotland or England is a world away from shipping it in from the South Pole and is a reasonable consumer choice to make. I think there are doubts about tap water. The one that springs to mind, which could be an urban myth, is the high levels of birth control pill residue in it, leading to low sperm counts…ok, maybe it is just a myth, but a lot of people believe it myths

The view taken by Panarama last night was slightly simplistic, though.

It is fine to work out the carbon footprint of different bottled water and compare it to that of tap water but does this take into account the footprint of manufacturing, transporting and laying all the pipes for the water main system? In London it is being replaced over the next ten or so years and the new pipes are made of a form of plastic. It is a complicated situation.

The waste seen at street marathon events is appalling, thousands of water bottles discarded after one mouthful and plastic is a hugh problem for the environment, but bottled water is not the only culprit. Do we ban soft drinks too? Be a positive move towards a healthier nation but I am pretty sure Coke, Pepsi and a few others might object.

It is fine for politicians to say bottled water is a fad and we did not need it thirty years ago, but the same could be said of, say, mobile phones. Add up the carbon footprint they leave in their wake but can you see people living without them now? It is government that promotes economic growth as a financial model and that means providing an ever growing range of products. There are a myriad things we don’t need, but are any of us prepared to live without them?

466 Million reasons for the RLHH.

Some in the medical profession are calling for the withdrawal of funding for the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (RLHH).

Mainly, because in their self-important opinion alternative medicine does not work. Presumably, they believe convention medicine does.

466 Million reasons why they could be wrong.

Doctors such as the one featured a few months back, on BBC1’s London InsideOut programme roll out the argument that conventional medicine undergoes strict trials, test, reviews and checks and, therefore is safe whereas alternative therapies do not and so are not safe or ineffectual. It is a doubly incorrect argument; firstly, alternative medicine is tested under extremely strict conditions and, secondly, conventional medicine is not always safe.

466 Million reasons to doubt their safety.

Even though most packs of prescribed drugs contain paperwork listing possible side effects, the people who defend conventional drugs and criticise alternative medicines, rarely, if ever mention them as they attempt to convince us, or themselves, that prescription drugs are superior to alternative therapies.

The 466 million thing?

Well, according to a report on BBC1 One O’clock News today that is the amount of pounds spent on average every year to treat the affects of side effects caused by prescription medicine. £466 million each year. I think it would be safe to assume that an amount like that could keep the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital running for another year with, say, at least the odd £400 million left over to pay nurses and what not.

Bottled Water: Public Enemy Number One.

Well, not quite but certain politicians are beginning to bleat about it. They want to encourage us to give it up and drink tap water. It is all to do with food miles and those carbon footprints; the latest buzz phrase on the lips of all those worthies suddenly waking up and finding themselves green.

Firstly, what happened to consumer choice?

I thought that was a buzz phrase too. “New” Labour always rattle it out. I have the choice in London to pay a congestion charge, travel on an over packed, slow, dirty train or wait in the rain for a badly driven bus. Hey, it’s called democracy and it’s worth fighting for.

So, if I choose to drink mineral water, I should have that choice right? I know it is about saving the planet but those people telling us what to buy, say, do and think still run the country in the same old way and still do deals with other nations with appalling records on ecology. When you really analyse it there is only one sure way to save Mother Earth, it is just that most are to squeamish to face it. We need to lose around four billion of the world population. Think about it, the world would be fine without us going round screwing it up. The birds would twitter in the trees and fish would swim in unpolluted seas. Tough solution though.

But back to the big bottled water debate. You see, I think we are being hoodwinked a little here and this is why.

Taking London as my example: Apart from rain filling the reservoirs and a few underground springs, London water is, basically, a closed system. The water we pour out of our taps, into ourselves and out with the flush goes to treatment plants and is recycled back into the mains water system. They say that, on average, the water you drink has been through seven people. Nice. That skanky bloke down the shops, the one who makes your average junkie look healthy? Yep, been through him. That old bloke on the bus, the one with the smelly trousers and unbelievable breath…could be…sound healthy to you?

Now consider this.

How many bottles of water are sold in every..EVERY…supermarket, newsagent, station and other outlets in London in an average week?

Thousands of litres. Now I don’t know about you but I do not nip off to France or up the Malvern Hills every time I take a pee. The point being that all that bottled water, that fresh H2O that has (hopefully) only been through you and nobody else, is being introduced, ie, added into the closed London water system. It all goes down your lavatory, gets recycled, and becomes London tap water. It is extra fresh water being added to the London water reserves. Surely, that helps dilute the sewage system, making water treatment easier?

Bottled water drinkers: You are helping to increase our reserves of clean, drinkable and unpolluted tap water…Keep going, I have calculated that at current rates, by 2049, London taps will be providing 96% natural mineral water!

Seriously? No, I made that up but the quality of mains drinking water and consumer choice are serious points. To end, I am sure I read recently that government departments are looking into adding flouride to mains tap water; healthy teeth and all that. I am also certain that I read recently that research has shown that flouride has a pacifying effect on people. It numbs us all down a bit. Very Huxleyesque.