CA: bottled-vs-tap water

To: "BBC World Business Programme"
Date: 26 JULY 09

Thank you for reading my previous letter to you about "butterfly...bee" business-practice. Here's another:

CA bottled-water

Here in CA, as the state economy sinks, local water districts (cf. mine, here in Santa Clara County,) are advertizing on local-TV trying to persuade habitual bottled-water drinkers to return to tap-water, using environmental arguments: bottled-water’s not better, but worse; tap-water costs less, reduces plastic landfill waste. Tap-water's as much a consumer-product as anything else, so they need to sell more of it at whatever price(s) they can, within deliverable limits (e.g., they're also simultaneously encouraging more efficient lawn-watering, suggesting it be done automatically at 5am.) Grand Object: reduce & eliminate bottled-water (like eliminating cigarettes.) (Poem follows:)

"Calivaporating…"

Californians are easily spotted
by bottled-water they carry,
but are being encouraged
to drink tap-water by local
water districts’ finally proving
bottled-water’s not better, but
worse; tap-water also costs less,
reduces plastic landfill waste.
Adios, chica bottled-agua;
you're Calivaporating…

(13 JULY 09, Santa Clara CA) v5
~ Bill Costley, former high-tech marketing writer; lifelong published poet