Archives for the 'water' tag
Bottled Watergate?
Forget unpaid taxes and illegal nannies, there’s a new ridiculous scandal in town: Possession of…bottled water?:
This week, the City Insider spotted an almost empty case of bottled water in the back of [San Francisco] Mayor Gavin Newsom’s hybrid sport utility vehicle as it was parked in front of City Hall. At least one full bottle of Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water remained under the plastic covering.
Newsom has no one but himself to blame for this one, though. He issued a bottled water fatwa in 2007:
This from the mayor who in June 2007 issued an executive order directing city government to no longer purchase bottled water, saying the containers clog landfills while the city owns a pristine reservoir in the Sierra Nevada that produces some of the country’s best-rated tap water.
Newsom wasn’t short on real scandals to begin with, but will Bottled Watergate bring him down?’
Bottled NYC tap water not at all a gimmick, all about local and green and stuff
Entrepreneur Craig Zucker is bottling and selling NYC tap water. Now that’s some chutzpah.
On the one hand, the fact is tap water is generally safe and delicious. I don’t understand buying the stuff except when you’re out and about and what you’re really buying is the convenience. On the other hand, I’m not crazy about Zucker’s enviro-nationalist-adbusterese “manifesto” on the Tap’dNY site. In part it reads:
Year after year, bottled water companies have told us that their water was somehow healthier or better for us than our own water. They spent billions of dollars on marketing to make us believe that we needed exotic water, in sleek packaging, from far away Arctic glaciers, tropical islands, and European volcanoes.
We fell for the fancy marketing gimmicks, too, and the brands we drank started to become status symbols.
Totally, because bottling tap water is not a gimmick, and there’s no way people would ever take politically correct water and use it as a status symbol.
Other copy on the site talks about the “miles saved” by not having to ship in the water from abroad, and that the local water requires “little energy to produce.” The site’s ordering page explains, “We do not deliver to Fiji or France—they can keep their water and we’ll keep ours.”
It’s curious that although the water is all local, it costs at least as much as the French variety. A 20 oz bottle of Tap’dNY costs $1.50, or 7.5¢ an ounce. Looking at Peapod, Evian is going for as little as .047¢ an ounce when you buy the liter bottle. I’m all for local—even if it’s more expensive—when it’s about quality and taste. But if it’s not about taste or quality (and certainly not about falling for marketing gimmicks), then Tap’dNY water makes as much sense as paying twice as much for an iPod because it was assembled in the Bronx.
Bottled or Tap, Fizzy or Still, Mouthwash or None?
Lititz, Pa. residents were halitosis-free recently after a “leaking manhole gasket in the Listerine production area” at a Johnson & Johnson plant spewed mouthwash flavoring into the town’s water supply.
More here. Town residents should be thankful that it was the minty-fresh and not the mediciney-stale variety of Listerine.
If you’re wearing an aluminum-foil helmet as you read this, you probably think this is just another government H20 mind-control tactic.
Why Water? Y Indeed?
Recyclable plastic and bottled water used to be good in the same way pull-tab sodas were bad. But now enviro types insist plastic bottles of water are bad, which means something good has to come along that they can like for a little while until it becomes… bad.
Just in time to appease the irritating green minions comes vitamin-enhanced Y Water, which is not just water but also a thing that holds water and a toy.
Chubby knobs make it easy for little hands to hold the new Y Water. After the vitamin-infused beverage is consumed (or spilled), the 9-ounce plastic bottles can be refilled, recycled or, better yet, played with.
Behar decided on a tetrahedron — which looks like an upside-down Y — not only to promote the brand, but also to give the packaging a second life. Using rubber connectors called Y Knots included with each bottle, kids can link the vessels to form space stations, superheroes, a double helix — anything a young mind can dream up.
“My sons Carl and Fritz made dogs,” says Y Water owner Thomas Arndt, who lives in Brentwood and is a former brand manager for the drink company that owns Red Bull. “We want to encourage kids to build whatever they want. And learn a lesson in reusing rather than disposing.”
The $1.69 beverage comes in four flavors denoted by the colors yellow, white, red and orange. Y Water is scheduled for mid-March release at Whole Foods markets and other outlets.
Judging by the photo, Y Water is also a toy that looks vaguely like a sex toy. Hype here from the LA Times. Y Water site here.
