Tap water is getting a bad rap and it just doesn’t make sense.
Here in Thunder Bay, nestled amid the pristine Boreal Forest in the heart of Superior by Nature, many local residents refuse to drink city water.
It’s okay for flushing the toilet or washing dishes and if you boil it you can even make tea, but these people prefer drinking their water from plastic bottles. City water scares them.
That’s a shame because just like many of the great cities in Canada and all over North America – we can boast about the safest and best drinking water in the world coming right out of the taps in our kitchen sinks.
And yet, people living here think there’s something wrong with it.
When I visit Toronto and the air gets a little thick I can always get a good glass of water. Tap water in the GTA is second to none.
It used to amuse me that the good and thirsty people of Toronto don’t trust their own municipal water supply.
They feel safer drinking manufactured water from plastic bottles, even if they have the same water running from their taps, which they often do.
But lately more and more people right here at home are sucking on plastic water bottles. Folks around here feel the same way about tap water as the scared rabbits in Toronto.
Over the years we have spent millions of dollars on state of the art equipment to ensure a safe, delicious and plentiful water supply. Now the stuff isn’t fit to drink. That doesn’t make sense.
Some say the public has been duped by the soft drink companies in what has been called the most successful (and deceitful) advertising promotion in marketing history.
They have taken a colourless, odourless, tasteless liquid that anybody can get for free and turned it into a hot commodity that consumers will gladly pay for. Plastic bottled water is being promoted as a sexier and healthier alternative to municipal water. It can change your life.
It is implied that drinking bottled water makes you happier, more attractive, wealthier and more sophisticated. And it only costs 100 to 1,000 times the price of tap water.
Consumers are swallowing it – by the billions. Right now Canadians are drinking about 2.2 billion plastic litres every year, spending about $2.2 billion.
Incidentally, those thirsty consumers who are willing to shell out a buck for a litre of drinking water are also paying three levels of government for the same water from their taps. It doesn’t make sense.
Coke’s Dasani brand is bottled municipal water from Calgary and Brampton, Ont. Pepsi’s Aquafina comes from Vancouver and Mississauga.
Many residents of those water-rich communities pay a hefty premium for their own bottled municipal water.
The soft drink companies imply that their bottled water is cleaner and safer than tap water. One independent study I saw found that one-third of the bottles tested would not pass minimum municipal drinking water standards.
Additional risk comes from the production, transportation and distribution of billions of plastic bottles. By the time they reach your lips there’s no telling how many times they have been sneezed on or handled with snotty hands.
Unfortunately, the study could not determine whether drinking water from plastic bottles actually does make you sexier and more sophisticated.
I drink tap water – straight up or on the rocks. When I’m in the back yard I drink hose water. It’s cold, refreshing and it has delightful rubber undertones.
And because it’s already bought and paid for, it makes perfect sense to me.
