Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (May 13, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1596913711
ISBN-13: 978-1596913714
Product Dimensions: 5 x 5 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (May 13, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1596913711
ISBN-13: 978-1596913714
Product Dimensions: 5 x 5 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
via : salon. June 07. 2008.
Waterlogged
"Bottlemania" author Elizabeth Royte explains how one of life's necessities became an extravagance, denounced by environmentalists and nuns alike.
By Katharine Mieszkowski
"Bottlemania" author Elizabeth Royte explains how one of life's necessities became an extravagance, denounced by environmentalists and nuns alike.
By Katharine Mieszkowski
June 7, 2008
To listen to a podcast of the interview, click here.
To subscribe: Click here to add Conversations to iTunes or cut and paste the URL into your podcasting software: Sparkling or still? Spring or tap? Imported or domestic? Flavored or plain? There's nothing simple about a drink of water, now that the bottled stuff outsells both milk and beer in the United States. In just a couple of decades, we've become a nation awash in bottled water -- with tens of billions of plastic empties to prove it -- transforming the drinking fountain on a city street into a dated curiosity akin to the public telephone booth.
To listen to a podcast of the interview, click here.
To subscribe: Click here to add Conversations to iTunes or cut and paste the URL into your podcasting software: Sparkling or still? Spring or tap? Imported or domestic? Flavored or plain? There's nothing simple about a drink of water, now that the bottled stuff outsells both milk and beer in the United States. In just a couple of decades, we've become a nation awash in bottled water -- with tens of billions of plastic empties to prove it -- transforming the drinking fountain on a city street into a dated curiosity akin to the public telephone booth.
How one of life's basic necessities became a heavily marketed beverage in a plastic bottle is the subject of Elizabeth Royte's new book "Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It." Royte, an environmental journalist based in Brooklyn, N.Y., shares the many, sometimes bizarre, unintended consequences of cracking open that plastic seal.
Twenty years ago, "bottled" largely meant luxury imported from a remote spring (think Perrier); it was a sign of sophistication. Now, Coke and Pepsi sell the two most popular bottled waters in the country, Dasani and Aquafina, by simply filtering and bottling tap water. Between 1997 and 2006, sales in the United States of this newfangled beverage -- water! -- leapt 170 percent. Not that the upscale stuff has simply evaporated either; today, bottled water is the No. 1 item by units sold at Whole Foods. The average American now drinks almost 28 gallons of bottled water per year, while as recently as 1987 we drank fewer than six.
Yet the staggering popularity of bottled water has inspired a backlash. Royte traces the raucous fight over water rights in one community, Fryeburg, Maine, where spring water is tapped and transformed into Nestle's Poland Spring, whose green label is familiar to many a parched Northeasterner. While wading into the environmental problems with bottled water, Royte also learns that old-fashioned tap water isn't just suffering from a bottled water industry smear campaign -- antibiotics with your water, anyone?
Twenty years ago, "bottled" largely meant luxury imported from a remote spring (think Perrier); it was a sign of sophistication. Now, Coke and Pepsi sell the two most popular bottled waters in the country, Dasani and Aquafina, by simply filtering and bottling tap water. Between 1997 and 2006, sales in the United States of this newfangled beverage -- water! -- leapt 170 percent. Not that the upscale stuff has simply evaporated either; today, bottled water is the No. 1 item by units sold at Whole Foods. The average American now drinks almost 28 gallons of bottled water per year, while as recently as 1987 we drank fewer than six.
Yet the staggering popularity of bottled water has inspired a backlash. Royte traces the raucous fight over water rights in one community, Fryeburg, Maine, where spring water is tapped and transformed into Nestle's Poland Spring, whose green label is familiar to many a parched Northeasterner. While wading into the environmental problems with bottled water, Royte also learns that old-fashioned tap water isn't just suffering from a bottled water industry smear campaign -- antibiotics with your water, anyone?
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