The headline/slogan for this campaign for Dasani is Move Your Water. Clearly something is lost in translation — this must be good in Spanish, because in English the connotation is urination. And while some might consider the thought of watersports with the handsome fellow in this ad to be appealing, I don't think this is what Coca Cola had in mind.
Dasani, by the way, has got to be one of my least favorite water products out there. It's bad enough that we've lost public drinking fountains so that we have to pay to drink what used to be free — and we mess up the environment after drinking it. Even before actually. The fuel cost of shipping this water, the use of water to clean the plastic bottles before they are used, and then the cost to the environment in landfill is appalling. And all this for water that has been completely denatured. Completely stripped of the trace minerals you want.
Oh, it's true, public water sources now are frightening when you consider how much in the way of pharmaceutical runoff is coming out of our faucets. Who needs an anti-depressant? Have a glass of water.
The New York Times has been reporting recently on the despoiling of water sources in the U.S. It's an important story: "research shows that an estimated one in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals or fails to meet a federal health benchmark in other ways. Those exposures include carcinogens in the tap water of major American cities and unsafe chemicals in drinking-water wells."
But industry gets a double bonus with this issue — they destroy our water and use it without paying for clean-up, and then they sell us water since we can't drink what they've messed up. Yup. Of course, some of the spring waters come from sources that are just as exposed to pollutants like agricultural pesticide runoff. So if you think you're doing better when you pay for water, many times you're not. The Environmental Working Group published a study last year showing that "10 popular brands of bottled water, purchased from grocery stores and other retailers in 9 states and the District of Columbia, contained 38 chemical pollutants altogether, with an average of 8 contaminants in each brand." And most of the plastic bottles contains PCBs, a known carcinogen that is released into the water when the temperature of the plastic rises or falls below a certain level.
Even more amazing was the information that some of the bottled water brands were simply tap water: from public water sources you have access to for free.
Mind you, there are some bottled waters out there that come in PCB free bottles (of course most of those bottles are glass, but not all). And some bottled waters are actually a good source of important minerals, helping to restore the pH balance of the body. But there aren't many of these, and of course, caveat emptor.
Yup. Ya gotta love the free-market economy and the rape of the environment brought to us by the last 8 years of the MBA President.
Really, you didn't think I was just gonna put up an ad with a sexy Argentine guy without getting on my soap box? Now excuse me, but I think I'll head downtown to Escuelita...
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