Water, Water, Everywhere?
by Vince?Daliessio
Tom Standage writes in the New York Times of his belief that bottled water is evil. Specifically he states that tap water tastes the same, smells the same, and is just as safe in all places and all times as bottled water. And he claims that all the transportation and manufacturing overhead is bad for the environment.
I'm sympathetic, to a point. It's not like it's efficient to spend money, labor, and energy manufacturing and transporting what can usually be had for free right at home. Most municipal water systems are run reasonably well, if you forget the occasional contamination with giardia, cryptosporidium, E.coli, and other pathogens at major municipal water systems recently. Oh, and the arsenic that the Democrats claimed the Bushites were putting in it.
But I digress. Most municipal systems are safe, most of the time. And many smaller systems are being bought up by private companies and run at a profit. Indeed, this is a fast-growing segment of the water business, big business to companies like United Water and American Water. Certainly, the growing privatization and competitiveness within the private water sector is boosting confidence in the safety and aesthetic quality of tap water.
Although private wells are also usually safe, aesthetic quality is often much less good. Many people who feel perfectly safe bathing and washing clothes and dishes in their well water have a legitimate odor or taste problem that isn't economic to remediate. Nonetheless, this is probably a minor contributor to bottled water sales.
So why do Americans pay so much for unbiodegradable bottles of a substance that can be had for free almost everywhere? Because there are some key differences between water, as provided by one's local government monopoly, and Water: The Beverage!
First, most bottled water is sold as a convenience, not a necessity. We buy it to take bottles to work, to the gym, to go walking, etc. Most of us will go to the sink and fill a glass if the stuff is palatable rather than fill the refrigerator with the pricey bottles for consumption at home. The sports bottle has also revolutionized office hydration, as it is much less likely to get upended into a report or a keyboard. It's also harder for a child to spill in the car, or into the family room carpet.
Second, most of this water is not competing with tap water, but rather with sodas and sugary soft drinks. As bad as all the energy and packaging pollution involved in bottled water is, the exact same amount would be used if no such thing existed - except we would be fatter, with more rotten teeth.
Standage does not seem to see the significant differences at work, and he seems, as all good socialists do, to distrust the market. He sees "water", and he cannot comprehend that there can be a praxeological difference as well as a scientific one.
And he does his thesis no favors by comparing spending on potable water and sanitation in the third world with the size of the bottled-water market. As we have seen in countless examples of the Aid mentality at work, even if every dollar spent for bottled water in this country was instead sent to, say, sub-Saharan Africa, the aquatic resources of those poor people would likely see meager improvement (Mercedes dealers in the area, however, would likely see a great upswing in business).
Still, I can't think the New York Times would give a voice to someone so economically clueless, har, har. One wonders if perhaps this jeremaiad aganst bottled water was intended to restore confidence shaken?by this story on New York's vulnerable,?unfiltered, undisinfected?water system...