According to the Nestle web site, bottled water was born 12,000 years ago, when humans collected water from natural springs and stored it in vessels to take along with them in their migrations. Today, mineral water is a prosperous international business that supplies virtually every market on Earth. The choices are endless. In a not so distant past, bottled waters were branded as exclusive products or affordable luxuries. Today, advertisements stress that mineral water is a primordial necessity, and staying hydrated at all times a health benefit. Nobody knows exactly why in Western cultures hydration has become an addiction as of lately -all those busy professionals carrying water bottles in purses and briefcases at all times, as if ready to face a cataclysm. As in the case of the sea-going water bag, the pertinent question is how is it possible that a few are profiting from the commercialization of a natural resource, which is indeed going to become increasingly more precious in an increasingly short future. Constant hydration may well be today a trendy behavior for well-off Westerners, but it is a real necessity for billions of people who don’t have their minimum water supply needs met, or those who live in cities where tap water does not have the sanitary conditions to be suitable for consumption. There is yet another flaw to the business of selling mineral water in individual containers: the unnecessary production of plastic waste, the majority of which is never recycled.
