July 9, 2007
Water, Unbottled
There's a kind of folktale Polish wedding tradition that Seattlest has always thought was cool. It says that when your daughter is born you fire up the still and produce a barrel of vodka which you then bury somewhere on your farm. Twelve years later when that daughter is getting married you dig up the barrel and drink it at the wedding, the vodka having been infused with the flavors, and, more ephemerally, the spirit of the land.
The July issue of FastCompany has an incredible article about another folksy beverage--water--and the bottling, marketing and selling of such:
When we buy a bottle of water, what we're often buying is the bottle itself, as much as the water. We're buying the convenience--a bottle at the 7-Eleven isn't the same product as tap water, any more than a cup of coffee at Starbucks is the same as a cup of coffee from the Krups machine on your kitchen counter. And we're buying the artful story the water companies tell us about the water: where it comes from, how healthy it is, what it says about us. Surely among the choices we can make, bottled water isn't just good, it's positively virtuous.Except for this: Bottled water is often simply an indulgence, and despite the stories we tell ourselves, it is not a benign indulgence. We're moving 1 billion bottles of water around a week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone. That's a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. (Water weighs 81/3 pounds a gallon. It's so heavy you can't fill an 18-wheeler with bottled water--you have to leave empty space.)
After reading the article we went directly to the Seattle Public Utilities site about the Cedar River Watershed that supplies our drinking water because, while we have a general impression that we have pretty good tap water, we've never really checked it out. Here are some photos from the virtual tour of the watershed:
What starts as snow up in the Cascades melts and makes its way down the rock and fir forests and into the Cedar River...
becoming infused not with the dirt, turnips and onions of Poland, but with the flavors and, more ephemerally, the spirit of the Pacific Northwest.
And then you turn on the sink in Seattle and it pours out. It's fucking amazing.
Seattlest once considered bottled water service to our duplex in Wallingford which we now recognize to be beyond insane.
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Now that we live in Rainier Beach, our Brita filter is a necessity -- the tapwater (at least in our house) is gross. In Wallingford and Wedgwood, though, it was fine.
Brita takes care of the south Seattle flavor, though, so we only have a case of bottled water on hand for emergencies.
Excellent Story!
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. Arsenic
The filter is (changed) once a year!
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Systems #223193
Is Chris Anderson's comment informational or just plain old spam? Regardless, Seattle water is really quite clean. And James, it may be your pipes more than South Seattle itself tainting your water. Or it could be South Seattle - I recall viciously avoiding the water fountain at Garfield High for the same "poor taste" reason. Oh and because I think Rick may have peed in one, once.
Thanks, Dan! This post was great food for thought today (and link to a truly excellent article). Not to toot my own horn but your post got me to thinking so much about this issue that I posted some of my own cogitations on my (pseudo)academic blog:
http://www.urbanarchives.org/wordpress/2007/07/10/a-bottle-of-place/