American Idiot...

it's a green day baby....

ok, I get to page 3 and there's a story by News-Press correspondent Brett Leigh Dicks about Uncle Nipper in China, attending a water summit. He's the keynote speaker of China's Ministry of Environmental Protection's World Golden Headwater Cycle Summit in Bejing...

apparently Nipper is a water expert because he drinks bottled water and some dudes invited him to speak about the bottled water industry in China..of course I googled the Headwater Summit and found nothing....so I figured something was amiss...going to China to promote bottled water under the guise of protecting health and the environment sounds a little fishy to me....

Nipper is not a water expert, he's a saleman..a peddler..a vendor.. I bought some mineral water yesterday for this blog post...it's in plastic bottle, it contains "mountain spring water" (tap water), and some carbonation....being a bottled water expert means absolutely nothing....it's like Arnold Schwarzenegger saying he's an ass expert because he groped some women, or Rob Lowe saying he's a sex expert because he molested an underage girl...

however, there are water experts who have studied water science and other applicable disciplines- if you know the details of storage, treatment and conveyance of water, if you are state certified water treatment plant operator, then I'll call you a water expert..otherwise you're just Wendy's waterboy....marketing bottled water to people who don't know any better....

but students, who the News-Press doesn't think should be allowed to vote, know better....

Our Schools Our Selves.

By Andrea Harden and Karl Flecker -

Picture this.
You are standing in a pristine natural surrounding – lush green vegetation, vibrantly coloured wild flowers, birds are singing in harmony. Nearby, a babbling brook unspoiled and safe for drinking.
Now picture yourself paying $1.50 for this refreshing and pristine water packaged in a convenient plastic bottle. This is the image that the bottled water industry is conveying in expensive advertising campaigns, and we’re buying it. Today close to one-fifth of the population in Canada relies exclusively on bottled water for their daily hydration. Bottled water is now outpacing the consumption of coffee, tea, apple juice and milk in Canada. Strange to consider that just ten years ago most people took their drinking water directly from the tap!

So why has bottled water become such a popular fad? Is it truly healthy, safe and convenient? These are the questions that a growing number of student, environmental, consumer, municipalities, and faith-based groups are asking. What is really ‘inside the bottle’?

The Big 4 bottled water corporate players are recognizable corporations – Nestle, Coca-Cola Danone and Pepsi. These corporations face a unique marketing challenge. Unlike other industries that transform valuable resources like timber, minerals, oil, and gas into new products, bottled water is simply water transformed into water.

Slick marketing promotes bottled water as healthy safe and convenient. Consider what Jeff Caso, a Nestle executive has to say about their bottled water products; “We sell water, so we have to be clever.” The marketing of water both implicitly and explicitly as superior to the alternative (tap water) has been key to the promotion of this image. The following quote from an industry website, bottledwaterweb.com,(NIPPER'S SITE) aptly sums up this process: “An unfortunate consequence of learning about the many drawbacks and dangers of tap water is that, now, when we turn our taste buds to bottled water, we have a long list of “don’t wants,” but a hazy idea of what we do want in our water. We’re just learning. Understanding all the bottled water option is the first step to take as we begin to wean ourselves off of tap water.”

This image can be deconstructed. Paradoxically, both Dasani (Coke’s water label) and Aquafina (Pepsi Co’s) are simply reprocessed tap water. Consumers are paying inflated prices for something they have already paid for through their own municipal taxes – quality tap water. It has simply been filtered, mineralized (in Coke’s case), bottled, and neatly packaged for sale. Bottled water corporations like to imply that these ‘proprietary’ treatment processes are elaborate thereby justifying the higher cost of their products (bottled water is between 240 and 10,000 times more expensive than tap water).

and...we all know about the environmental damage plastic bottles do.... the USA is hip to that fact..but in China, the environment is not exacty a priority...China's environmental woes are mounting, and the country is fast becoming one of the leading polluters in the world. The situation continues to deteriorate because even when Beijing sets ambitious targets to protect the environment, local officials generally ignore them, preferring to concentrate on further advancing economic growth. Really improving the environment in China will require revolutionary bottom-up political and economic reforms.

that's right ..they have more pollution than they know how to fix...that's what happens when real water treatment is not a priority.....and the reason why we owe China so much money is because we have too many American idiots like Nipper running around... running around with Wendy's money, with a bottle of water in his hand, trying to look important....and promoting more economic pollution....

now... can anyone explain what the water cycle is??