The commercialisation of water
"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water." W. H. Auden
Today was my walking day and as I walked I pondered on what I would write about today. It had rained overnight and there were little pools of water here and there. I was walking and so, as one does these days, I had a water bottle in my bag. So I thought I would write about WATER. But as I walked I thought how pretentious this was and how superficial anything I could say about the value of water would be - the world worries about water - there are international bodies set up to study it. People fight wars over water - and they say it will be what future wars will be fought over. So I abandoned ideas of writing about water per se. Others have done it so much better. And they have also said what I am about to ramble on about better - but I'll give it a go anyway.
As always my walk ended in the supermarket and, because I was still thinking about water, I found myself in the water aisle - it seems to be growing every time I go there - and in the French hypermarkets it's just enormous. But this picture is Australian.
How and why has this come to be?
A long time ago now water was unsafe to drink. It was not available from the tap at home - often, even in advanced cities like London - the only available water was from a fountain or tap in the street, or a well. Cholera epidemics, and other water-borne diseases were a direct result - and so people drank beer and other alcoholic drinks instead. They were safer, although obviously problematic. Even in my lifetime - and I talk here of the developed world - there have been places where the water was unsafe to drink - France when I was young for example. No doubt Italy too - though now you can drink from all the fountains in Rome quite safely. And even if the water is safe it might just be unpleasant - like Adelaide water. In the four years that I lived there I did not drink it. Most Adelaide people have rainwater tanks that they use for drinking, making tea and coffee and cooking. And, of course in much of the third world, tap water is unsafe and/or there is no tap water. So in these circumstances bottled water is the answer (if you can afford it).
But what is bottled water? Well as the supermarket shelves show it's not that simple and new ideas of what you can put in a bottle and call it water, are popping up all the time. It's a bit like that wonderful milk ad where the lady in the milk bar rattles off about a dozen different kinds of milk. There is filtered water and mineral or spring water, flat or fizzy, Australian or European - proud to be Australian versus fashionably European.
The Europeans have long been into the health benefits of spas and those spas have marketed their water on this basis - hence Evian and Vichy for example. And not to be outdone the Australians have also cashed in on this - Mount Franklin, Daylesford et al. These waters are said to contain minerals which are beneficial for our health - some of them claim to cure all ills - or particular kind of ills - just visit a European spa town and you will see the sick and elderly desperately seeking a cure but 'taking the waters'. I have no idea whether these claims can be upheld - I'm sure you can find the answers on the internet. Anyway - one of the advertising pushes is the health benefits of the particular spa the water comes from. Clean, natural, fresh ...
The other main angle is taste. This is where you find the more expensive upmarket and mostly fizzy bottled water - San Pellegrino, Perrier, Voss. It's a fashion thing - just look at the design of the bottle itself for a start and the way it is advertised - the fizz of the bubbles (almost champagne), the circumstances in which it is drunk, the people who are drinking it ...
And finally there's the fitness thing - beyond the health benefits of the minerals the water contains. And to my mind this is the most dodgy appeal. I'm sure we all know that we are 60% water, and that we need to replenish the water we lose every day through urine and sweat. That we will die without water. Nevertheless opinion seems to vary as to how much we need to drink. 8 glasses a day seems to be a sort of standard and is certainly pushed by all those people with an interest in the commercialisation of water. Lately though, I have heard one theory that says you only need water when you feel thirsty. Also that you get water from sources other than water - lots of vegetables contain large amounts of water. Other drinks contain water. But I don't intend to get into the pros and cons of how much water we need to drink. Suffice to say that granted we should all probably drink more water why does it have to be bottled water - and in this context it's often bottled sports drinks - because the target audience is the fitness freaks. I discovered today in the supermarket that you can actually buy little (expensive) bottles of flavouring and also of the sports drinks additives to add to your own, or 'ordinary' bottled water. And I'm sure we have all read and heard about the dangers of sports drinks - from simply having a lot of sugar in them, to some of the additives being potentially dangerous. Then there's coconut water too - now what's with that? It certainly shows that the drinks companies are constantly looking at new ways of enticing us to buy yet another kind of water.
And even if you decide to stick to tap water - well Melbourne does have some of the best in the world, you can't escape spending money because you have to drink it out of a water bottle. Even I have one - a lovely present from my sister with a photograph of myself and my siblings sitting on a cold English beach back in our distant childhood. Your children are compelled to take water to school in their lunch boxes - well I don't know that for sure, but I suspect they are and they have to have a bottle to put it in. The range is huge and ever-changing with every new craze. And if you go to the gym and are good and actually don't buy bottled water, you still have to have your tap water in something.
So I know I didn't say anything new - and I actually do like ice-cold bottled fizzy water in the summer - but ordinary soda water will do - and you can make your own. I do think that on the whole it's a bit of a rip-off though and yet again exploits the vulnerable.
