Friday, February 15, 2008

Bottled water

I met a woman at a meeting I went to last year who was campaigning to encourage people to drink tap water (or just filter their tap water) instead of drinking bottled water. Her organization's water campaign can be found here. It is definitely worth looking at. After talking to her, I have been thinking twice before buying bottled water.

The Sunday Observer had a big article about this same issue last weekend. "It's just water, right? Wrong. Bottled water is set to be the latest battleground in the eco war"

At work, I have been following a case that relates to the privatization of the water system in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The project was a disaster and the private contractor hired for the job ended up making things worse rather than better. Now, this company (joint venture between Biwater and Gauff) is in arbitration with the government of Tanzania for having cancelled the contract. Interesting stuff. It is interesting that I sometimes have to remind people that access to water is considered a human rights issue. Humans don't last too long without water.

1 comment:

Mama T said...

Something in this post made me think of this guys photography:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/
It's the Running the Numbers exhibit. I guess there's probably one photo of the number of water bottles bought in a minute. Or worse, thrown away in a minute.