The Consumerist Paradox | Why We Choose Bottled Over Tap
![Picture](/uploads/1/5/6/8/15682038/8337678.jpeg?0)
The consumer paradox is mainly made possible as a result of the manufactured demand for water bottles created in the latter half of the twentieth century. This paradox is one that shows how, despite strong evidence that overwhelmingly supports the drinking of clean, safe, inexpensive water, people purchase an increasing number of bottles of water [this particular market growing at an annual rate of seven percent (Baskind, 5 Reasons Not to Drink Bottled Water)]. These choices are a reflection of the mushrooming of several aspects of the society we live in: convenience, indolence, as well as the ever-dominant and prevalent consumerism. This in turn has a cyclical effect on inequality, as those that can consume are the very affluent, but by consuming, they further drive the wedge of the widespread and characteristic inequality in our world. These problematic features of our society are epitomized and made tangible by the water bottle conundrum.
We just can't tell the difference.The manufactured demand for water bottles has its roots in one simple fact: the taste, or lack thereof, of water. This is demonstrated by the fact that there have been a myriad of blind taste tests that in fact show the testers preference for tap water over bottled. Examples of these tests include:
A test conducted by Good Morning America in 2001 in which the results of the blind test had the following preferences: 12 % of testers chose Evian water, 19 % chose 02, 24 % chose Poland Spring, and 45 % marked the New york City tap water as best tasting (Hale, Why Does Bottled Water Taste Better). This is just one in countless blind tests conduced world wide.... |
![Picture](/uploads/1/5/6/8/15682038/679953.png?661)
In France, a collaboration between the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA), the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Lyonnaise des Eaux, a public water supply managing company, ran another taste test between municipal tap waters and bottled mineral waters (Abrahams, Studies Reveal that Water Tastes like Water). The result is not only an inability to tell the difference between tap water and bottled water, but an overwhelming preference for municipal tap water!
Healthier than bottled water!“There has been a major effort on the bottle water industry to convince the public that bottled water is far safer, better and cleaner than tap water. Our results showed that this is not necessarily so” (Eric Olsen, director of the Drinking Water Division of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)). NRDC tested 100 brands of bottled water, out of which a third failed to meet clean water standard for tap water (Bottle This).
|
This is due to the fact that there are fewer regulations applied to bottled water as it theoretically would fall under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s authority, but over 70 percent of bottled water stays within state with regards to sale and is therefore not subjected to the FDA’s oversight. Tap water, on the other hand, is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, which examines it constantly for toxic chemicals, bacteria and contaminants (Baskind). Municipal tap water has the added bonus of fluorination as a prevention mechanism for tooth decay.
|
Would you pay ten thousand times the price of a sandwich?
![Picture](/uploads/1/5/6/8/15682038/3674290.jpeg?1)
Water is a basic human right, and as such, is supposed to be an inexpensive commodity. “Most people pay less than $10.00/kilogallon (1000 gallons or 1 cent gallon) for public water as opposed to the $6-8.00 per gallon price of the bottled waters” (Constructing Purity, Opel; 68). Consequently, it is baffling why people keep buying bottled water when there is a 10,000-fold mark up.
It is easier to reach for a bottle of water than to take a container from home (requiring forethought) and searching for a tap water supply. “Convenience was the most popular reason cited for drinking bottled water” (Examining Reasons for Bottled Water Consumption, Leigh Foote; vii). This is not restricted to purchasing bottles of water, but is in fact a manifestation of one of the general trends present in today’s culture: indolence through increased convenience. This idleness is partly caused due to a turn towards a more sedentary lifestyle...
So are we just lazy? or is it something else....
Simultaneously, the increased stationary lifestyle further drives a desire for convenience. Not only this, but “the case of bottled water is part of a larger process of the commodification of nature within a capitalist, commodity culture” (Opel, 69). This is a result of the world shifting towards a consumerist society, in which consuming becomes the method of gratification of individuals, and in which “economic worth has displaced traditional cultural values defining self worth. Self-worth is gauged by buying power. The acts of buying and owning reinforce self-worth within consumer society. Ever so subtly we are losing our ability to act independently of the justifications of consumerism” (Consumerism and the New Capitalism, Cronk).
|
Consumerism evolved as people have found ways of utilizing resources more effectively and by decreasing the amount of work they have to put in.
|
![Picture](/uploads/1/5/6/8/15682038/3324037.jpeg?119)
In other words, society has become synonymous with consumer; there is little need to differentiate between the two when there is no need to. Consumers have been produced in order to manufacture demand, as is demonstrated above.
The consumerism that runs rampant in our society has also had other implications on the goods that are created nowadays. In the 1950s, the major manufacturers shifted from making relatively more costly products that were more durable and repairable to items that had inbuilt obsolescence, were lower quality and needed continuous technological upgrades.
“It is this industrialization which has so severely limited the supplies of clean drinking water worldwide, and is the necessary agent to allow for the production and distribution of specialty water to a consumer society” (Opel, 75). Therefore not only does our consumerist society contaminate the water supplies naturally available to the people through industrialization, but it also concurrently drives a demand for the production of more goods (bottles of water) that in turn keep on contaminating more, as only those wealthiest can afford to switch to paying exorbitant prices for a basic human right...