Awash in fresh, clear consumerism

Last night, I grew angry when I saw yet another person cart the warehouse-store sized gazillion pack of tiny water bottles into their home.

If you would tell our grandparents that we would be buying water in plastic bottles simply to drink, I should hope they would have called us idiots. It is something that was undoubtedly and should still be an absurd concept, but at some point, someone somewhere figured the right mixture of marketing and trend-setting could convince a gullible public that they needed their water out of a bottle.

I'm not quite sure what compels people to buy water like this. I assume for many it is a combination of laziness and a lack of a sense of consequence. With a bottle of water, you don't have to go through the hassle of filling up the container or carrying it home empty. You just grab that convenient serving size, sip it and then toss the container when you are done. Ahh, refreshing!

Still others probably think that the water is healthier than the stuff that comes out of the faucet.

Isn't it ironic that we're worried about the safety of our water because of all of the pollution we are causing, so we solve the problem by transporting our water in containers that are one of the single most significant presences at landfills? Instead of employing an efficient pipe to bring us water, we're counting on trucks, trains and boats and all of the destructive infrastructure they depend on, just to take a sip.

Maybe if bottled water was really healthier than its tap equivalent, we could begin to talk about whether or not it is worth the other costs -- but it ISN'T. Kansas City has some of the best rated tap water in the country, and regulations controlling water quality from public utilities are more stringent than the FDA's regulation of bottled water.

Yes, your tap water is held to a higher standard, but it has a far smaller marketing budget.

The answer to that age old question "if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you too?" has been answered many times over, resoundingly. Yes, we would, and we do everyday. We've been convinced to act destructively by companies that are more than willing to plummet face first into the rocks, as long as plenty of people come with them and bring their wallets.

With the amount of money that we spend on bottled water, we could do a lot of cleaning up. We could make sure everyone had access to safe, clean tap water no matter where they were, and we wouldn't need a complicated supply chain to get it there. We could protect our water supply instead of pulling it from other places and often causing shortages there.

The American Way is out of sight, out of mind, though, and nobody shall infringe upon our right to our Dasani.

Next up, bottled air, so we can all get a breath of fresh country air, brought to you via long haul diesel truck.