Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water
In 1976, the average American consumed a gallon and a half of bottled water each year. By 2008, the number had grown to about 30 gallons of bottled water per person in the U.S.
That amount, says Peter Gleick, “equals about 115 liters of water each year, most of it from single-serving plastic containers.”
Gleick, a freshwater expert, is the author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water. In the book, he examines how drinking water was commodified and branded over the past 30 years, turning what was once a free natural resource into a multibillion-dollar global industry — while raising questions about the taste and safety of drinking tap water.
“Tap water is poison.”
—A flyer touting the stock of a Texas bottled water company.
“When we’re done, tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes.”
—Susan Wellington, president of the Quaker Oats Company’s United States beverage division.
Description
Peter Gleick knows water. A world-renowned scientist and freshwater expert, Gleick is a MacArthur Foundation “genius,” and according to the BBC, an environmental visionary. And he drinks from the tap. Why don’t the rest of us?
Bottled and Sold shows how water went from being a free natural resource to one of the most successful commercial products of the last one hundred years—and why we are poorer for it. It’s a big story and water is big business. Every second of every day in the United States, a thousand people buy a plastic bottle of water, and every second of every day a thousand more throw one of those bottles away. That adds up to more than thirty billion bottles a year and tens of billions of dollars of sales.
Are there legitimate reasons to buy all those bottles? With a scientist’s eye and a natural storyteller’s wit, Gleick investigates whether industry claims about the relative safety, convenience, and taste of bottled versus tap hold water. And he exposes the true reasons we’ve turned to the bottle, from fearmongering by business interests and our own vanity to the breakdown of public systems and global inequities.
“Designer” H2O may be laughable, but the debate over commodifying water is deadly serious. It comes down to society’s choices about human rights, the role of government and free markets, the importance of being “green,” and fundamental values. Gleick gets to the heart of the bottled water craze, exploring what it means for us to bottle and sell our most basic necessity.
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Praise for Bottled and Sold
“Gleick covers the topic in illuminating detail, yet packages his writing with the skill and passion of a novelist. Supported by research, including interviews and plant visits, Gleick examines how water is found, pumped, bottled, treated, lied about, and sold to a relatively unsuspecting public. If selling bottled water is a shell game, Gleick picks the right shell every time.” – Foreword
“Gleick trains his scientifically objective eye on the bottled water phenomenon… [and] offers a sobering yet sensible look at society’s ill-considered thirst for bottled water.” –Booklist
“With the gusto of a born raconteur and the passion of a believer, Gleick makes a sound case for improving the developing world’s access to and the developed world’s attitude toward safe, piped drinking water purified by the natural hydrologic cycle.” – Publishers Weekly
“Alongside fascinating discursions into the history of the public water fountain, cholera, and Kabbalah, Gleick provides an dispassionate glimpse into purposeful distortions of science that drive us to believe bottled water will make us ‘healthier, skinnier, or more popular.'” – Seed
To read an excerpt from the book, please click here.
Biographies
Peter H. Gleick is President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California, and is a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship for his work on water issues.
Table Of Contents
Preface
Contents
Chapter 1: The War on Water
Chapter 2: Fear of the Tap
Chapter 3: Selling Unwholesome Provisions
Chapter 4: If It’s Called “Arctic Spring Water,” Why Is It from Florida?
Chapter 5: The Cachet of Spring Water
Chapter 6: The Taste of Water
Chapter 7: The Hidden Cost of Convenience
Chapter 8: Selling Bottled Water: The Modern Medicine Show
Chapter 9: Drinking Bottled Water: Sin or Salvation?
Chapter 10: Revolt: The Growing Campaign Against Bottled Water
Chapter 11: Green Water? The Effort to Produce Ethical Bottled Water
Chapter 12: The Future of Water
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Review Source: Island Press
This book is available online at Kalahari.net.
Now R293.95
Delivery time: Usually within 11 working days.
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 9781597265287
Length: 241mm
Width: 159mm
Thickness: 25mm
Weight: 463g
Pages: 211
Illustrations: Illustrated
