Bottled Water is Soda

Nature, in its wisdom created trees, animals, clouds, man, woman and water. Man in his dis-wisdom continues to dismantle nature. For example, water.

I don’t understand the message on this bottle: vapour distilled water and electrolytes for taste. What are electrolytes? I don’t know and I don’t want to, because water is perfect like rain, its mother. Snow is perfect until it hits the ground and finds the rotting mess on streets.

Water is tasteless. That’s why it’s called water. But we want to make money from this free gift so we add something, electrolytes. It becomes soda then we can sell it. How do they put it? Added value.

We put the soda in a bottle, drink it at a conference and toss the bottle in a blue recycling bin if it’s lucky. If it’s not, it goes into a thrash can. We won’t talk about recycling because we do not care. The immediate concern is someone convincing us that bottled water on conference tables is better than jugs of water we used to have.

Better, how? Because it has electrolytes. Tap water in the jug is not perfect either, because it came from the city’s water recycling plant, but we made baby food with it, the baby grew up and drank it from a glass and we cooked with it.

Money makes the world go round and us less and less healthy. We destroy nature, lock it in a container that cannot be born again like a leaf on the ground, add value called ’electrolytes’ and sell it to millions of people who live in tight spaces called cities. We get away with it because they have never cupped their hands and drank from a mountain stream.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.