Make up your mind!

Isn't this the ultimate image of a wholesome lifestyle? Pure, fresh, artesian water, bottled at the source (i.e. the tap at the factory sink.)

Drinking tap water, for the past 10+ years, has been vilified as the surest way to ingest all sorts of nasty chemicals and who-knows-what-else. Personally, I've always drunk water from the kitchen sink. Why? Because it's cheap! And, where I live, it tastes exactly the same as bottled water. Heck, I drink water straight out of the bathroom sink. I'll even go one further - I DRINK FROM OUR HOSE! Oh yeah, I live on the wild side.

But I was always aware that my free-style drinking habits were not very P.C. Hanging out at the park, you could tell which parents were truly hip and organic because they had the most unique and foreign-looking water bottles. The ones with pictures of exotic mountain peaks on them, that you just knew they had probably climbed during their years of volunteer work with the Peace Corp.

I have, occassionally, bought bottled water. It can be handy for picnics and hikes - you know, when you're going to be someplace where there isn't a faucet handy. But it's always been just the cheap store-brand water bottles (although I did, once, splurge on a bottle of FIGI water. It had pictures of palm trees. I kept refilling it until Jared lost it at his baseball game. Curses!)

Well, my non-water bottle drinking ostracism has finally come to an end.

Our dear Seattle Mayor Greg Nickles today signed an executive order, banning the City of Seattle from buying bottled water. He says, "Producing bottles for U.S. consumers required more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the fuel required to transport the bottles."

OK. Whatever. Those figures may or may not be legit. I don't really care. The fact is nothing has really changed. It has always cost a ridiculous amount of money to produce and distribute a product that we have always been able to get quite simply from our own kitchen faucet. Are the people of Seattle really such lemmings that they couldn't realize that on their own years ago? Do they seriously need Mayor Nickles to inform them that drinking your own tap water is better for the environment, cheaper, and perfectly healthy!?

I'm just waiting for the shit to really hit the fan when Mayor Nickles calculates how much it costs to supply Seattle with their Starbucks. :-)