There's been an awful lot around recently about why we shouldn't be buying plastic bottles of water when there's perfectly good drinking water in our taps.
Lucy Siegle wrote at length about it in the Observer a few weeks ago, then the crew at Panorama waded in with a decent documentary last week. Amongst other issues, they examined trends for importing Fiji Water from the South Pacific island, making a 10,000 mile journey to British supermarkets. As Lucy pointed out, this is "a particularly potent symbol of excess" - how ugly our pursuit of the exotic is (the water can apparently "trace its origins to rainfall more than 400 years ago in the Fijian mountains") when one-third of the Fijian population still don't have access to safe, clean drinking water.
Today, Dame Yve Buckland, head of the National Consumer Council for water, has become the latest public figure to explain why consumers should avoid bottled water in favour of free stuff from the tap (listen here). Apart from the environmental impact of both transporting the water and the mounting plastic landfill, it's now all about value for money for consumers.
To a man (or woman), everyone now seems to believe tap water is of "excellent quality" - no big surprise to me, I've never noticed the difference anyway. But why has it taken them all so long to tell us? And can someone please tell the waiter who gave me a withering look for asking for a jug of tap water recently?
