Announcing a bottled water restiction at my house

After reading the FastCompany article by Charles Fishman on bottled water in the July issue, I will not condone buying bottled water for the house. I had not really understood the enormity of what we have done with this phenomenon.

A chilled plastic bottle of water in the convenience-store cooler is the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture. It acknowledges our demand for instant gratification, our vanity, our token concern for health. Its packaging and transport depend entirely on cheap fossil fuel. Yes, it's just a bottle of water--modest compared with the indulgence of driving a Hummer. But when a whole industry grows up around supplying us with something we don't need--when a whole industry is built on the packaging and the presentation--it's worth asking how that happened, and what the impact is. And if you do ask, if you trace both the water and the business back to where they came from, you find a story more complicated, more bemusing, and ultimately more sobering than the bottles we tote everywhere suggest.

Read the full story here and make your own decision.

Take the quiz and see how you score on your water knowledge.