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Cheers...to efforts to get away from all this bottled water
You’ve probably heard an excellent salesperson being described as being able to sell ice to Eskimos, or something like that. Well, the bottled water industry is just about as good at marketing, when you consider the millions and millions of bottles of water sold each year, in most cases to consumers who already have quality water coming out of multiple faucets and refrigerators in their homes, on demand.
It’s true, the bottled water industry is a juggernaut, and it’s attained this status, aside from the convenience of buying a bottle of water, at the peril of municipal water systems. The bottled water industry has made municipal water service to consumers’ homes seem less than pure, dirty even, when the opposite is for the most part true.
What’s the result? Millions upon millions of plastic bottles that take who knows how many thousands of years – or is it millions – to bio-degrade. It’s litter that never goes away, or ends up circling in that Texas-sized trash whirlpool in the Pacific Ocean. Not only that, people drink water out of so many plastic bottles that unhealthy chemicals start to accumulate in your body. That can’t be good.
Well, now, with an interest in thinking greener serving as the main driving force, determined people are fighting back against the bottled water industry through initiatives like “Think Outside the Bottle,” and speaking up for plain old tap water at the same time. You see, in many cases, no matter how natural-sounding a bottled water brand name is or how pretty its logo is, often with mountains, etc., the water inside is not likely discernable from water coming out of your kitchen faucet that fills a glass or plastic cup that you wash and reuse.
So cheers to tap water! It’s cheaper, obviously, and doesn’t flood the planet with all that plastic. And since when is turning a faucet knob suddenly so inconvenient?
Jeers...to Christmas in the spring
Often, during the Christmas frenzy, Christians and other religious types will attempt to remind everyone charging their credit cards up to the limit that consumerism and materialism on steroids aren’t what Christmas is supposed to be all about.
Well, what about Easter? It’s weird enough that a large, furry rodent is the widely embraced symbol, mascot even, of the annual holiday rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it’s even weirder that kids search for baskets overflowing with chocolate and candy, and hunt for plastic eggs filled with more chocolate and candy.
But when did Easter become a mini-Christmas in the spring? If every kid in Crookston who received a gift for Easter that wasn’t edible – and by “gift” we’re talking something substantial and expensive – suddenly turned fluorescent green and glowed, we’d all need sunglasses to combat the glare.
Come on, people. Or, specifically, come on, parents. Give the kids a little chocolate and some jelly beans and call it good, at least until their half-birthday party rolls around.
Cheers...to efforts to get away from all this bottled water
You’ve probably heard an excellent salesperson being described as being able to sell ice to Eskimos, or something like that. Well, the bottled water industry is just about as good at marketing, when you consider the millions and millions of bottles of water sold each year, in most cases to consumers who already have quality water coming out of multiple faucets and refrigerators in their homes, on demand.
It’s true, the bottled water industry is a juggernaut, and it’s attained this status, aside from the convenience of buying a bottle of water, at the peril of municipal water systems. The bottled water industry has made municipal water service to consumers’ homes seem less than pure, dirty even, when the opposite is for the most part true.
What’s the result? Millions upon millions of plastic bottles that take who knows how many thousands of years – or is it millions – to bio-degrade. It’s litter that never goes away, or ends up circling in that Texas-sized trash whirlpool in the Pacific Ocean. Not only that, people drink water out of so many plastic bottles that unhealthy chemicals start to accumulate in your body. That can’t be good.
Well, now, with an interest in thinking greener serving as the main driving force, determined people are fighting back against the bottled water industry through initiatives like “Think Outside the Bottle,” and speaking up for plain old tap water at the same time. You see, in many cases, no matter how natural-sounding a bottled water brand name is or how pretty its logo is, often with mountains, etc., the water inside is not likely discernable from water coming out of your kitchen faucet that fills a glass or plastic cup that you wash and reuse.
So cheers to tap water! It’s cheaper, obviously, and doesn’t flood the planet with all that plastic. And since when is turning a faucet knob suddenly so inconvenient?
Jeers...to Christmas in the spring
Often, during the Christmas frenzy, Christians and other religious types will attempt to remind everyone charging their credit cards up to the limit that consumerism and materialism on steroids aren’t what Christmas is supposed to be all about.
Well, what about Easter? It’s weird enough that a large, furry rodent is the widely embraced symbol, mascot even, of the annual holiday rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it’s even weirder that kids search for baskets overflowing with chocolate and candy, and hunt for plastic eggs filled with more chocolate and candy.
But when did Easter become a mini-Christmas in the spring? If every kid in Crookston who received a gift for Easter that wasn’t edible – and by “gift” we’re talking something substantial and expensive – suddenly turned fluorescent green and glowed, we’d all need sunglasses to combat the glare.
Come on, people. Or, specifically, come on, parents. Give the kids a little chocolate and some jelly beans and call it good, at least until their half-birthday party rolls around.
