Water water everywhere and plenty of it to drink, but now we need to pay for what was once free; I guess that’s why people are so annoyed.
Yes, the day when we have to pay for tap water has almost arrived, and just like when we were introduced to the concept of paying for bottled water back in the early 1980s, many are finding the concept hard to believe.
There are those who believe that bottled water is better than tap water and those who believe the reverse, regardless of your stance. The fact is, Ireland can’t afford to provide a service such as clean water for free anymore and I suppose our friends in the IMF have picked up on this anomaly as most nations charge for water.
If we assume that both tap and bottled water are equal, both have similar costs associated when it comes to purifying or producing their final product; then why should it be okay for one party to charge for their service and the other be castigated for charging for theirs?
Is it fine to charge a higher price per litre than petrol for bottled water and on the other hand flush a similar quality of H2O down your toilet for free? I guess in Ireland because it rains so much and water is in such abundance, we naturally take it for granted. We really should be exporting our water and not importing it.
If we look at water and don’t discriminate on whether it came from a tap or plastic bottle, we see that H20 is a very interesting compound. It makes up around 70 per cent of the human body and it also makes up around the same per cent of the earth’s surface. Water is dense so you can’t really carry as much as you need to consume. I guess this is why bottled water is so popular. I wonder how many of us would buy empty plastic bottles if they sold them in shops and let you fill up your bottle for free?
When I see the guys who replace the water coolers in office blocks; they pull up in a truck laden with water (heavy stuff; they unload those massive bottles and struggle to put them on their trollies. We could save them them all that hassle and pollution associated with their getting that water to the office by turning on the tap, but that would also put them out of a job too. I guess for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.
On Bottled Water
With the exception of the current spell of weather, Ireland isn’t the warmest country in the world. Nations such as the USA have been guzzling copious amounts of battled water for longer than ourselves. Back in 1999 the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) a USA based environmental action group, produced a report on bottled water. One of the findings was that half of all Americans drink bottled water; about a third of the public consumes it regularly.
“Sales have tripled in the past 10 years, to about 4 billion USD (3.1 billion EUR) a year. This sales bonanza has been fuelled by ubiquitous ads picturing towering mountains, pristine glaciers, and crystal-clear springs nestled in untouched forests yielding absolutely pure water. But is the marketing image of total purity accurate? Also, are rules for bottled water stricter than those for tap water?
Not exactly. No one should assume that just because he or she purchases water in a bottle that it is necessarily any better regulated, purer, or safer than most tap water,” stated the NRDC report.
In Paris in 2005, the powers that be distributed free designer carafes in a bid to convince Parisians that tap water was just as good as bottled water. At the time around 51 per cent of Parisians said they drank bottled water.
