Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water

Tap water is safe almost everywhere in the U.S. So why does someone buy a bottle of water every second of every day? And where do the thousands of plastic bottles discarded daily end up? Gleick, recipient of a MacArthur fellowship and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, argues passionately for a new era in water management. “[P]ublic access to drinking water would be easy, and selling bottled water... difficult,” he writes, and government regulatory agencies should protect water from contamination and the public from “misleading marketing” and “blatant hucksterism.” Bottled water companies should be forced to include the true environmental costs of the production and disposal of plastic bottles in the price of bottled water, leaving it as an expensive option that most people will avoid With the gusto of a born raconteur and the passion of a believer, Gleick makes a sound case for improving the developing world’s access to and the developed world’s attitude toward safe, piped drinking water purified by the natural hydrologic cycle. (June)