Ian Williams is a journalist and U.N. Correspondent for The Nation and a weekly columnist for www.MaximsNews.com.   Ian Williams is the past president of the United Nations Correspondents Association.  See his Bio.  See his columns listed below.   IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com 

             UNITED NATIONS -- 17  December 2004 / www.MaximsNews.com /  ‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink’, Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ declaims hoarsely. 

WC Fields would have approved as he claimed never to touch the stuff anyway, his excuse being that fish fornicate in it.

But the ancient mariner’s modern day shipmates are likely to have holds full of one of the most ostentatiously useless consumer products of all: bottled water – branded dihydrogen oxide.

Years ago, an entrepreneur tried to sell tins of fresh Scottish air to jaded Londoners. They were supposed to open it, sniff the fresh breeze that emanated and, if they followed the instructions, run twice around the block. 

They would feel better for it, the label said. Indeed. The enterprise eventually evaporated into thin air.

By contrast, bottled water is more of a commercial success, and increasing numbers of people are buying it in larger and larger quantities, even though benefits are equally illusory. 

All sorts of greenish individuals stock up on bottles of water rather than going to their kitchen sink and drinking the much cheaper generic alternative.

Do they ever stop to think of the damage they cause to the environment? 

For example, in New York supermarkets, apart from Perrier, you can get water from Scotland , Fiji and even Greenland , which is alleged to be melted glacier water. 

Think about it. Why should water that has been lying around since the last Ice Age, or maybe even the one before, collecting dioxins, lead, radioactive fallout, polar bear poop and, for all anyone knows, the occasional dead Inuit or Viking, set any acceptable standard for purity?

Then, to completely insult our intelligence, the water is bottled – often in glass, no less, thus demanding huge energy expenditures to fuse the ingredients and smelt the bottle tops, or in plastic, demanding high hydrocarbon usage. 

Manufacturing either type of container emits huge amounts of greenhouse gases. 

During bottling, the water is often ozonated, introducing free radicals to kill the bacteria that would otherwise thrive on a long journey.

The bottles are then placed in shrink-wrapped non-biodegradable plastic units and stacked on disposable wooden palettes, deforesting whole regions, before being hauled by diesel-fueled trucks, which emit carbon particles and carbon dioxide, and loaded onto ships that burn the dirtiest of bunker fuels.

Finally, they arrive at your local store where you pay a $1 a bottle (or more) while cursing your city for charging the same amount for 500 gallons of some of the purest municipal water in the world.

Of course, not all bottled water travels such an environmentally deleterious voyage. No, sir. 

In New York , many of the firms selling bottled water to offices and homes take it straight from the city supply and put it in bottles. 

It is quite fitting, really, a bit like selling the Brooklyn Bridge on the installment plan.

Some bottles are then recycled, which means they are cleaned using water heated by burning fossil fuels, or melted at huge energy costs to make new glass. 

Alternatively, they’re cast aside to clutter the beaches and landfills of the world. 

And then there are those ubiquitous plastic bottles that every health-conscious jogger – indeed every pedestrian – in Manhattan clutches talismanically in the summer heat. 

Never mind the way the discards clog the drains, ditches and beaches. 

Have they ever thought of the complex organic compounds that leach from the plastic into that ‘pure spring water’ they just bought at the neighborhood deli?

Unless of course they are drinking the allegedly naturally carbonated water that has been divested of bacteria with the introduction of carbon dioxide. 

They drink it, and then every burp helps melt a snowman somewhere in the world. Don’t they feel the slightest twinge of guilt?

Green joggers should savor every last drop of that glacier melt bottled water. 

If they keep consuming a product that adds so much in greenhouse gases, soon there will be no icecaps left to bottle. 

And the sea levels will rise, forcing them to stock up on bottled water – because although diluted with all that fresh water from the melted poles, the sea will be everywhere, and still too saline to drink.

Think before you drink! 

A trip to the kitchen to fill up on pure, cheap, low energy water will save the planet – and your bank balance. 

Until of course, the IMF forces New York to privatize its water supply and you have to pay market prices for the stuff.

Email Ian Williams:  IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com

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Ian Williams' Weekly Columns in MaximsNews

   "Water, water, everywhere..."  17 December 2004

    The Future of the U.N.  10 December 2004

   William Safire and Kofi Annan... 1 December 2004

Rice in State Department: World Cut Off...  17 November 2004 

Money Talks... 11 November 2004

Turkeys Voting For Christmas -- JOIN CANADA... 4 November 2004

KIM JONG IL Wants a Vote for the Incumbent Too!  28 October 2004

President Bush and the Three Little Pigs... 13 October 2004

When Hypocrisy Can Kill...  7 October 2004

Bush  - Still A Deserter Safire, still wrong...  15 September 2004

Bushowulf – the Saga   10 September 2004

Why Lebanon?...  9 September 2004

Ian Williams Welcomes Republicans to New York...  29 August 2004

What kind of Veteran?  Calley-type or Kerry-type?  25 August 2004

Chavez Beating about the Bush...  18 August 2004

The War Records of Bush and Kerry...  12 August 2004

Where is Osama Bin Laden?  6 August 2004

Sudan, To Intervene – or not to Intervene?  27 July 2004

Mr. Sharon, Tear Down This Wall!  16 July 2004

William Safire – Warped, on Speed, or Just Running Mad Again?  13 July 2004

Bosnian U.N. Defender Locked Up  7 July 2004

The U.N., the U.S. & the I.C.C.  30 June 2004

The New York Times, William Safire and the United Nations  23 June 2004

Hastily Contrived, Verbose, and Fudged: Security Council Resolution 1546  16 June 2004

Is the U.S. Clever Enough to Rule the World?  9 June 2004

Humor the Beast: the U.S. and the ICC  2 June 2004

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?  20 May 2004

The Solution to the Iraqi Knot  12 May 2004     

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