Bottled water is a big business.  It has been estimated that water bottle sales worldwide range between $60 and $100 billion.  These large sales are due to great marketing.  Bottled water is often thought of as the freshest, most healthy water one can drink.  It isn’t uncommon to see water bottle labels containing words such as, spring water or majestic alpine streams.  The copy seen on labels often reassures consumers that the water they consume is somehow much more pristine than the water that comes out of a faucet or drinking fountain.  However, bottled water isn’t so different from tap water as many think.  Most bottled water differs from tap because of the process used in bottling it.  Bottled water is run through large purification machines and then have minerals added to help with the “taste” of the water.  This minor point only goes to show that bottled water is hardly as majestic or pristine as marketers make it appear.

To shed some insight on the big business of bottled water, Elizabeth Royte will be coming to the UW-Whitewater campus on Monday, April 8, 2013 to lecture on “Bottlemania: Big Business, Local Springs and the Battle over America’s Drinking Water.”  Elizabeth Royte’s writings on science and the environment has appeared in many well known publications such as The New Yorker, National Geographic, Outside, and The New York Times Magazine.  Her first book, The Tapir’s Morning Bath: Solving the Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest, was awarded Notable Book of the Year for 2001 by The New York Times.  This lecture will be fun and full of insight on bottled water from a well-known writer.

Let us know what you think of the lecture on our Facebook page or Twitter.

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Thank you for joining this week’s Conservation Conversation.

– Michael Jaworski