Our Names on Bottled Water

Plastic bottles that end up along the seashore, public flowerbeds and in garbage dumps should have names on it, just like in Starbucks.  They used to write your name on the cup when you ordered a designer coffee like frappuccino, cappuccino, and other brews with all the accoutrements.

Names on the bottles will be admission of guilt that we bought the 12-pack, drank half the water, threw the bottle away and contributed to the defacing of the planet.  We need a felt pen because this can only be done at home, after removing each bottle from the 12-pack plastic wrapping.

Names on the bottles will also give individuals a platform to explain the poison in tap water, a poison only detected by the extra-incomes (rich people) in North America and Europe.  Ordinary people around the world drink tap water or fetch it from streams.

Names on the bottles will also expose fake Greenpeace and Save The Arctic volunteers, who fight oil companies on the high seas and demonstrate downtown, but have bottled water tucked away in their backpacks.

This does not in any way diminish these advocates’ commitment to reminding oil companies and other industries only interested in the profit margin, that there is only one planet.  Full time Greenpeace and Save the Arctic activists are also the envy of half the world because they are free, free to protest without fear that employers will sack them when they see them in videos.  Most people don’t have that economic freedom.

Names on the bottles might be wishful thinking, but it will be acceptance that we collectively collude with big business to destroy the earth, mother earth, as Cree, Ojibwe, Dakota, Dene and all First Nations put it.

By:  Nonqaba waka Msimang.