Because flooding Yosemite Valley isn't wasteful enough! - posted at 18:57

In Anchorage we get our water from Eklutna Lake, one of the single most stunning places on Earth.

And yet, even in Alaska, we are not immune from the disgusting trappings of excess,

I am talking about, of course, bottled water.

I mean, really, why drink pure water from a natural, local source when you could pay to have someone in a city thousands of miles away put their tap water in a plastic bottle and ship it to you? That's the American way, isn't it?

To further highlight the evils going on here, that plastic bottle made from fossil fuels will be used a single time and will likely be thrown away. Plus, water is very heavy, so you've got to expend lots of fossil fuels to get the stuff up here in the first place. All this does is increase our demand for oil, which, incidentally, increases it price!!! But hey, look, now I'm in tanget land!

I wish I could say that Anchorageites are the only stupid American consumers. But alas, you don't have to look too far for another similar case. My husband lives outside of San Francisco and gets his water from Hetch Hetchy, which is basically a second Yosemite Valley that they flooded to make a reservoir. Just like Alaskans, they are drinking water that is as pure as it gets, but Californians are stupid enough to buy bottled water too!

I've lived in many other places in the country and only one of them (San Angelo, Texas) had water that was truly too god-awful to drink . When I say too god-awful to drink, I mean that the water was so hard that the you could actually see mineral particles in the tap water and the area had an astronomical rate of kidney failure - and I still got my water locally, from machines that would do some crazy reverse osmosis process on the city water supply that made it taste just fine and dispensed it into gallon jugs that I re-used the whole time I lived there. But you know, if I ran out of the fancy-pants machine-dispensed water I still could drink the tap water. It certainly wouldn't kill me. Think of all the other millions, if not billions of people in the world who aren't so lucky. They would probably be super pissed if they found out that Americans snub their city water supplies and wash their cars in perfectly potable water while elsewhere, all those who are less fortunate have to drink is water that gives them dysentery. Ever play Oregon Trail when you were a kid? People die from that shit!

So seriously, engage your brain before you commit an act of utter wastefulness and remember, if you're going to bitch about the price of gasoline, you'd best pass on that bottle of Dasani you were going to buy at the gas station.

Chrissa commented:

Hey! Glad you posted, I've been wondering what you were up to.

Just wanted to let you know... both Jared and I PASS on bottled water. =)

Jitterbean Girl commented:

Hooray! Good to know - I always knew you two were smarter than the average bear...

I remember Jared's uber-decorated Nalgene bottle from tech school... ah, if it hadn't been for that bottle I never would have discovered Dinosaur Comics!

Marissa commented:

I rock the tap water as ofter as I can. I got a huge Klean Kanteen online, and take it just about everywhere. Even the dog has her own Kanteen.

Jitterbean Girl commented:

Hooray tap water! Thanks for doing your part to save natural resources like water and gas :)