Saturday, July 28, 2007

Why buy what falls from the sky?

One of the most logical campaigns I've heard of recently is Think Outside the Bottle, a nonprofit that challenges us to examine why we waste vast amounts of money and resources when much of the world still lacks access even to clean water. "Just three corporations – Coke, Pepsi and NestlĂ© – make up over half of the US bottled water market. These corporations are privatizing our water, bottling it and selling it back to us at prices hundreds, even thousands of times what tap water costs. They have turned a shared common resource into a $100 billion global market." To my surprise, culinary might is also helping to forge a path: "Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California, has helped lead the way by serving tap water instead of bottled water."

Jeff Caso, a former NestlĂ© Senior Vice-President for Marketing, Sales and Communications, summarized it best: "We sell water so we have to be clever.”

Try these creative ways to reuse newspaper. I think I need to give the shoe odor absorbing trick a try.

1 comment:

michel said...

It always amazes me that the Bay Area, which probably has the best weather (foggy, ~18 C) is among the most environmentally conscious.

I guess people who are living in 40 C or heavy floods are in such desperate situations they really can't think of what to do. quite SAD.