Conscious Choice: Bottlemania

July 2008 | Art & Soul

Bottlemania

How water went on sale and why we bought it

By Elizabeth Royte (Bloomsbury) / Review by Eric Larson

While researching her book Garbageland, investigative journalist Elizabeth Royte was inspired to consider ways of reducing the amount of waste she was responsible for. She began by eliminating disposables — among them, single-serving water bottles, which have become a defining feature of the American consumer costume in the past 20 years. This decision got her thinking about the 50 billion or so bottles of water we guzzle every year, and from that thought — a trickle — came a flood, now bottled up and available in her new book, Bottlemania.

Royte approaches the bottled water phenomenon with two basic inquiries in mind. First, she floats the question many thoughtful consumers have asked — whether there’s really any difference, in taste or toxins, between the stuff that’s bottled versus what comes from the tap. Second, she asks what impact, if any, the bottled water industry is having on the environment and on the communities where the water originates.

The short answers are: “Not really,” and “A significant one,” but short answers make for dull investigative journalism, and Bottlemania is decidedly not dull. In well-paced and interesting prose, Royte has crafted a well-
researched argument and an entertaining read.

In between her investigation of arsenic in the public water supply and sorting out the difference between ground and surface water, Royte traces the history of portable water, from the first ceramic jugs to the half-liter PET plastic Poland Springs bottles that are ubiquitous today. She introduces us to a host of places and characters, including a self-professed bottled water “expert” who has her look at the texture and shape of a naturally carbonated bottled water in a Manhattan park.

Royte also takes us along to filtration plants, watersheds, out-of-the-way springs and Manhattan grocery aisles (where certain bottles of water are priced higher than fine wine) to dig deep into problems that concern her and, frankly, ought to concern more of us — lest we sell out the last of our water supply only to have it sold back to us at ridiculously inflated rates.

The deeper source of Royte’s story, though, is in Freyburg, Maine, where the mighty Nestlé Corporation, which owns the brand (and land) Poland Springs, is engaged in a protracted tug of war with locals over whose groundwater it really is. The Freyburg controversy ultimately serves as a not-so-small window into a world where water wars are all but inevitable. And while Bottlemania may not solve the controversy once and for all, it’s likely to inspire readers to think differently about both their Fiji and the stuff from the kitchen sink.

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