Disgusting and totally unnecessary. Pure pollution, no benefit.
Picking up litter in Washington Square Park I found yet another discarded mostly full plastic bottle of Fiji brand water.
Someone may have paid a dollar or two for water shipped ten thousand miles to a city with water rated among the best in the world, then not even drunk twenty percent of it nor even put it in the trash, let alone a recycling bin.
It doesn’t matter that it’s just one bottle. No step of this value chain improved the world or anyone’s life. Every step polluted it. It reveals our values.
When I was growing up, we viewed bottled water as some froufrou European expensive affectation. Now we saw it as necessary, as if a store without a dozen brands of bottled water meant we lacked freedom.
What happened to us? How did we let the marketers win so thoroughly?
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