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I really wonder which capitalist scumbag decided it was a great idea to take water from an aquifer which a small island nation depends on, put it into disposable plastic bottles, and then send it to countries across the world to sell it to pretentious rich people. I mean, what the fuck.
I hate everything about the bottled water industry.
71% of Earth is covered by water, but only 1% of that is freshwater. Of that freshwater, less than half is accessible to us.
Without water, you can only live for about 3 days. Access to safe water is listed as a universal human right by the UN. Water is one of our most important commodities. It’s also one which almost everyone in wealthy countries takes for granted.
The fact that people consider water something to make money from should be sickening to everyone. And yet, selling water in disposable bottles made from petrochemicals is so normalised, most people don’t even think twice about it. It’s so wrong.
@InvaderXan big enormous absolutely the size of the literal sun SAME
@InvaderXan I've read research that 90% of the bottled water around the world contains a lot of plastic particles (it was plastic that was used to make the caps, not the bottles themselves curiously). There's no proof that it's harmful to humans, but it's also pretty impossible to prove that. The reseach also found that these plastic particles are everywhere - in soil for example.
I'm always carrying filtered tap water with me wherever I go.
@unfa I read up about those microplastic particles once, and it was even worse than I realised. The particles really are everywhere. They can be found in tap water too. In air. In sea water. In soil. In our bodies. Reading about all this made me feel extremely uncomfortable.
@InvaderXan Yeah, I've read in the research that humans are dumping millions of tonnes of plastic trash into the oceans every year. So no wonder this stuff is everywhere.
In a thousand years maybe we'll have polymer dunes?
@unfa I expect before then, we'll have a few specialised microbes which have evolved to metabolise plastic particles. Biologists have already discovered at least one.
@InvaderXan Yeah, probably living organisms will be hosting such bacteria - just like humans are hosting a few kilos of them right now, only they'll help us get rid of the plastic.
I can magine joghurts with plastic-eating bacteria being sold as a health product :D
@InvaderXan Except the expiration dates... those make for good water... O_o
Many USA cities live entirely on bottled water and don't think twice about it.
Las Vegas lives on bottled water, I've seen it there firsthand, and there have to cities dotted along the entire Gulf Coast which live that way too. And I'm not talking poor communities like Flint, MI, I'm talking wealthy white communities (like Vegas) who function because they can afford to bring in bottled water.
@raye Yeah, and then those wealthy communities argue that they don’t need to invest in better public water infrastructure because “why bother when we can just buy bottled water?” 
Exactly!
@raye It just stinks of privilege and makes no sense at all
No part of the white USA culture that I was raised in doesn't stink of privilege, so I really have no functional perspective on what it would be like to not have that.
) @InvaderXan @raye from what I know about Vegas, its whole existence is a huge mistake, and I don't get why anyone thinks it's the ultimate travel destination.
or rather, i get it, but they are wrong.
Moved account, follow @lilov @InvaderXan water is one of the major issue this century will have to face, and at the intersection of many things and the big companies at it are dangerous at every level...
@baerd So true. Water scarcity is already a problem for so many people. When we talk about sustainability, everyone thinks about CO2. We really need people to think more about H2O as well.
@gattogateaux Dressing up exploitation as some kind of humanitarianism is just 21st century capitalism all over
@gattogateaux @InvaderXan do you have any sources about that specifically? I haven't heard much about that program since it started.
I looked it up and now "microloans for water" are specifically marketed that way By NGOs.
It's so predatory.
@InvaderXan id recommend the dollop podcast episode entitled "The Resnicks: Water Monsters" to learn /exactly/ which capitalist scumbags did it.
you don't know the half of the evil shit these folks pulled.
@selontheweb Thanks for the rec. Sounds like I should prepare to be angry before listening to this though!
@InvaderXan and also, to laugh, the hosts are fantastic. but also also, to be pissed
@InvaderXan Bottled water is a terrible idea to begin with but Fiji is like someone thought really hard about how to make it as fucked as possible
@pagrus Right?? It’s about the most glaring example of capitalism, exploitation, and privilege that I can think of!
@InvaderXan It was soul crushing to restock an entire aisle of bottled water twice a day. All that plastic packaging going straight into a landfill or the ocean so people wouldn’t have to drink tap water
@pagrus I can imagine. Things like that really highlight exactly how absurdly unsustainable it is
@InvaderXan and all that wasted human effort, for what?
@InvaderXan And in San Francisco too, where the municipal water supply is great
@InvaderXan Is it *actual* water from Fiji or just a stupid marketing gag? Either way would be appalling, and the former more so.
@turion It does actually come from Fiji. From an aquifer on Viti Levu, the largest island, to be precise.
Assuming Fiji has the same kind of geography as Hawaii, aquifers like these are the sole source of fresh water for people living on the islands. They’re only replenished by rain water, and the process takes millennia.
@InvaderXan @turion they're trying to do the same thing in hilo on big island right now, drilling into the maunakea aquifer using a old permit for a fish processing plant from the 1990s to do it
@InvaderXan @turion the aquifer on kona side is already at capacity and the there's tension from water being diverted from ancient still-active taro field water sources on oahu into golf carts and subdivisions where it's wasted on watering grass
@InvaderXan @turion *golf courses lol carts >_<
Making Fiji my new best friend since I think Coca Cola pulled the same number on our local reservoirs. :/
@xenophora it’s stunning how common this kind of thing is. A little solidarity goes a long way.