Tuesday, June 9, 2015

White Caps


Most of these caps are from bottled drinking water. The ubiquity of bottled water challenges our aversion for polemics when discussing plastics. We know the testing for the purity of bottled water is less rigorous than the testing for tap water. Think about the last time you saw a public drinking fountain on the street.

Bottled water rose to popularity in the 1970s and is now the second most popular drink after sweetened soft drinks. It's a strange sight to see cartloads of bottled water being wheeled out of "big box" stores.

Water is heavy, accounting for a large portion of the cost, as it is transported in bottles across the planet.  Fiji Water, actually from Fiji, is shipped thousands of miles to market. The folks who who gave us Fiji Water, also marketed POM pomegranate juice as a cure-all and gave us the cute pistachio TV ads. Those same folks own 52% of the Kern County water bank.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKn_7fyB5fw&w=560&h=315]

In these drought times, we are ever more aware of water use and we are now becoming cognizant of agriculture's usage at 80% of California's water. Are water wars just around the corner?

Marketing rules the waves of our economy as we see from the products of Roll Global who manages the pistachio and pomegranate farms generating billions in revenue. What if the sensible use of our planetary resources was aggressively marketed ?


Finding meaning the mess of a bunch of simple white bottle caps. In 2010 we were the "poster children" for Coastal Clean Up Day. Our caps lookin' good in this ad campaign.