Next time you’re at the store, take note. There is an entire section dedicated to … water. You’ll find SmartWater, Voss, Dasani, Aquafina, and, oh yes, the one that started the fad of paying for water: Evian. Spell that backwards and you get: Naïve. What more can we say about a buying public that’s willing to pay $1 a bottle (or more) for what flows out of the tap virtually free. We understand the fear of drinking water after a storm or some other catastrophe, but we’ve seen no such thing lately. Certain groups and companies have played upon a fear inside each of us. While several of them are busy hawking sodas and other beverages, they have also found a way to make people feel good about paying for water. They even have it to where restaurants, in some situations, are charging you for the same item you get from your tap. We find it ironic. Some people will freely pay 99-cents to $1.75 for a 16 ounce bottle of water. People used to wish someone would invent a car that runs on water. Well, if it’s bottled water, that’s $4 or more! We might want to stay with gasoline. At $1.75 for a 16 ounce bottle of water, you are paying $3.50 for a quart of water or $14 a gallon. Now that same $14 will cover the basic usage fee for water in Milton. In fact, Milton’s $13.05 basic water fee covers 3,000 gallons of the stuff! That’s 24,000 16-ounce bottles of water! Or, looking at it another way, if $13.05 buys the equivalent amount of 24,000 bottles of water… that’s just about a half-cent per bottle. Yet many folks happily for over so much more. Obviously, somebody had a good idea when they decided to sell the public on the concept of water in a bottle. We’re not pointing the finger at anyone for preying on our fears. Everyone does it. Drug companies spend huge bucks to run commercials convincing you what pill you need (before you ever even go to see the doctor). Ah, we ARE a gullible lot, aren’t we? We want to feel like we are doing the right thing, yet end up in a never-ending circle of doing the ridiculous. Water is a necessity. We pay someone to bottle it for us, when we have a virtual endless supply at the turn of tap. Before you tell us it is spring water or something specially filtered, think about what you getting ready to say. Municipal water companies are held to such tough standards, it’s likely their water is more pure than the bottled stuff. The city water probably has a chlorine taste, but a $19 charcoal filter would get rid of that. Before you spend your child’s education fund on a trendy bottle of water, we suggest you try a blind taste test. See if you can tell the difference. If you just like the snob appeal of paying $1.75 for 1 ounces of water, we’re sure Milton would be more than happy to raise it’s rate to an equal amount. Would you happily pay $42,000/month for your water? Why not? You don’t even have all that plastic to throw away.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Are we smart or naive?