This is a picture of the mouth of a 7-year-old boy named Ryan Massey who has the misfortune of living in a coal mining area in West Virginia. In case you missed Sunday’s New York Times article “Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering:” [Ryan’s] entire family tries to avoid any contact […]
drinking water
Avoiding pharmaceuticals as a way to keep our water safe
I happened to be in front of a TV the other day and just about every single ad was for some sort of drug. The ones that always get to me are the ones for hay fever, from which I suffer. Some years ago, I discovered the “neti pot,” a method of flushing out your […]
The ridiculousness of relying on “market indicators” to run our planet
We’ve all heard talk of the efficiency of the free market. You know, as the idea goes, companies will only do what customer-citizens want them to do, because if they don’t, customers will sanction the companies by not buying from them. There are all sorts of reasons why this doesn’t work, of course, including the […]
Let’s go viral with this excellent action on bottled water
The Center for a New American Dream emailed me to ask for our help, so before I even start, let me ask you to email this post to everyone you know. Blog about it. Give it love on Digg, Reddit, all the other sites and send it to your grandma. Because we have a chance […]
Public water fountains as an answer to the bottled water problem
Some reasons for a fountain on every corner instead of a hundred bottles in every trashcan: City collection of empty bottles is expensive Free water is cheaper than bottled water If water is free, then the price differential encourages kids to avoid sugary drinks Fewer delivery trucks in the streets mean a lower carbon footprint […]
Do you want this man in charge of your drinking water?
A while back I wrote a post called “When what’s happening to gas happens to water,” about how companies are buying up water rights and looking forward to the day when clean drinking water is sparse and the price goes through the roof. I wrote, “You see, it’s not just about the plastic bottles. It’s […]
Bottlemania
An excellent new book tells the story of our drinking water crisis by focusing, in particular, on the bitter dispute that erupted between the townspeople of Fryeburg, Maine, and Nestle’s Poland Spring, which wanted to bottle their water. Bottlemania, by Garbage Land author Elizabeth Royte, will be out in bookstores in the coming weeks (you […]