Bottled vs tap: the great debate

Water wars are about to begin and I’m going to win

By Nury Vittachi

*

Here’s a wonderful modern sales technique. You go up to someone and say: “We’d like to sell you something you don’t need because you already have it.”
                Now people like me who have an intelligent, rational attitude to spending money (my wife prefers the colloquial term “repulsive old miser”) would respond: “No thanks. I already have the things I already have.”

                But the reply of the typical fanatical consumer (I prefer the technical term “my wife”) is this: “Yeah! Sure! Bring it on. Here are the passwords to our bank accounts. Take what you need.”

                The best example of this is the bottled water debate.

                For years, we had this amazing high-technology device in our home called “A Tap”. Purified drinking water came out of it. We drank it. It was free.  I never had to change the batteries. And the supply never ran out, even on days when the kids flooded the apartment with the stuff.

                But now we have a Bottled Water Dispenser. Purified drinking water comes out of it. It costs a fortune. It uses electricity. It runs out constantly. Family members drink from it when they can and hang around parched when the delivery is late.

                Now DO NOT TELL ANY MEMBER OF MY FAMILY this, but on the rare occasions I get home before they do, I fill up the water dispenser with ordinary tap water. Nobody notices.

                A nutritionist told me that most bottled water is classified as “purified water” and so is tap water. “But there is a difference,” she added. “Tap water supplies are checked for purity constantly and there’s an endless budget for keeping the system going. Bottled water supplies have rare visits from outside inspectors, sometimes once every few years.”

               After years of moaning to deaf ears about this, my pro-tap-water point of view is finally gaining ground.

                At a water industry trade show in Singapore a few days ago, specialists showed equipment they said could pipe the highest quality water to cities all over Asia. It coincided with a statement from the Earth Policy Institute that there was “a backlash against bottled water “.

                But the most powerful strand of my Tap Water Revival Plan concerns youth. You see, almost all young people these days are Global Warming Nazis. Taking a community’s tap water, bottling it, driving it to supermarkets, and reselling it back to the community, is the single most wasteful activity on the planet. 

The other day, one of my kids was sitting in the living room with all the lights on, plus the TV, plus the stereo, plus the computer, plus the iPod, plus the air-conditioner, sipping chilled water from the cooler. I emerged from the kitchen, having popped in to drink a glass of tap water. She slipped off her headphones. “Dad,” she moaned. “Turn the kitchen light off. You’ll cause global warming and WE’LL ALL DIE.”

This type of passionate, irrational, youthful energy is the most powerful force on earth. When I marshal squads of youths all over the world to campaign on behalf of tap water as a cure for global warming, nothing will stop us.

My daughter and her friends will fearlessly stride into wine bars and point their fingers at shocked yuppies: “Put down that bottle of Evian. Or WE’LL ALL DIE.”

Comments

[shawn]

lol , shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
im still heavily associated with perrier ---- we cant let this fact get out
wait by the corner , van should be by to pick you up shortly to take you to an undisclosed location --- dont mind the hood , its purely asthetics

[Nury]

Thanks, Shawn, for the invitation, er, I think.
I think Perrier can consider itself "above" this debate, as it is not really a substitute for tap water, but has a taste and texture of its own. It used to have really wit ads, too, which really helped generate a positive feeling about it.

[Lisa]

I like that Evian inverted is 'naive'
We should all drink more naive water.

[shawn]

remember perrier is also vittel and contrex to name a few under the company umbrella

[Vince A]

After bottled water, I think I know what the next big thing is, and I have invested my savings into this new venture:

Bottled Air.

It makes sense. Regular air has far far more toxins than tap
water does, so why not clean it up and pack it into inhalable bottles?

But we don't do just regular city air. Ours are specialty air (the 'Perrier' of air)

Our current line up includes:

-- Beijing Industrial Summer

-- English Countryside (whiff of wet grass and sheep droppings)

-- French Countryside (whiff of cheese, wet grass, and sheep droppings)

-- Himalaya High (air lite)

-- Austrian Alps (makes your break into song about the audio-sensory aspects of melody)

-- Ceylon Seabreeze (bottled when it was still call Ceylon)

[Nury]

Brilliant idea. The distribution is going to be the tricky thing. Those oxygen shops that they had in Tokyo and in Hong Kong had a similar idea but never really took off. You had to pop in to breathe the good air and people couldn't be bothered to travel. With bottled water you can buy it any where and they deliver to your home. Perhaps Shawn, the Perrier guy, can give us some ideas?

[Samantha]

Air bites, chocolate covered blobs of pure oxygen, or how about helium so that you can make funny voices ?

[Lisa]

The baby market is always very susceptible. You can sell anything to new parents with young infants with the label "non-toxic, safe for babies" and the like.
For example, there's a particular brand of bottled water for mums and babes in Poland and it's slightly more expensive than the regular bottled water.
Then of course, there's fruit juices that are reputedly 'milder' for babies than the 100% natural type.
And then there's the biscuits for babies that are supposed to have more calcium and less sugar, blah, blah, blah.

Conclusion: one should introduce the pure oxygen concept to the baby market.

[Jan]

I hate to have to spoil the fun of Vince's great idea, but packaged air IS already available, though in cans rather than bottles. It is possible to purchase 'Fresh Devon'; 'Welsh' and 'Mancunian' [that's Manchester, for non-Brits] varieties, and probably more if you search hard - plus 'specials' for Christmas etc. The problem though, is that the cans are ring-pull types, so it's one huge lungfull and then gone for ever - bottles would be much more economical!

[Nury]

Interesting comments.
But I think the canned air thing doesn't work except as a low-volume gimmick, whereas the bottled tap water thing is a billion dollar industry and has made many people very rich.
You can't actually take in air from a can--that's the problem.

But I think Samantha is on to something. Chocolate-covered air has lots of advantages compared to canned air.
(a) it tastes of something.
(b) it is much less fattening than normal chocolate
(c) it is light weight so cheaper to distribute than normal chocolate
and most of all:
(d) it is an excuse to eat chocolate as a health food.

Lisa, your comment on the baby air market is a good one. But do you remember Jetmate water which used to be available in Hong Kong?
It had a note on it which said: "Caution: for drinking purpose only."
This implied that if you want to feed your baby with it, fine, but if you want to wash the car, get something better!