I have a special (kind of useless) talent: I can taste the difference between different bottled water brands. I can take one sip of water and tell you if it’s purified or natural spring water, and whether it’s from Nestlé Pure Life, Aquafina, Dasani, or any other well-known bottled water brand. That being said, it’s quite evident that I buy a lot of bottled water.
Before you label me as someone who doesn’t live a sustainable lifestyle, let me explain to you why I often drink bottled water. For the first half of my life, I lived in Hong Kong. Due to the lack of regulation in water quality, I was always raised to never drink water from the tap. In 2015, it was even revealed that the drinking water from a public housing estate in Hong Kong had lead levels that were three times higher than the World Health Organization’s recommended level.
Growing up with the belief that tap water is unsafe, I have had a hard time adjusting to the fact that I can drink BC’s tap water. Though I’ve been living here for over 10 years, if you were to ask me to drink BC’s tap water, I would still be reluctant to. It was on my recent trip to Kenya did my perception of tap water change.
This summer, I had the opportunity to travel to Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya has a water and sanitation crisis, and we were strictly told to never drink water from the tap. Even if we were to wash our vegetables, we had to add a powdered water purifier to make sure the water was disinfected and safe. If we accidentally drank some unsanitary water, we would run the risk of getting Cholera, an intestinal infection.
Due to the water crisis, we all made sure to boil our water well before drinking. This means waking up a little bit earlier every day to boil water, wait for it to cool, then pour into our bottles. This may not seem like a big deal, but if you shared one kettle with 5 other girls, this could add up to 15 minutes to our daily routines. Because of this, I have grown an entirely new appreciation for the convenience and safety we have with BC’s clean tap water.
Among many other important lessons I’ve learned through my trip this summer, I realized how fortunate we are to have the luxury of drinking tap water here in BC. If you were to ask me now, I would be more than happy to gulp down tap water instead of bottled water!
Hi Nicole,
This post resonated with me so much! Growing up in China, we have pretty much the same issue: don’t ever drink water from the tap! I was thinking about the plastic bottle issues in Asia the other day and how the only solution will have to be biodegradable plastic. Because people will always need to buy water bottles there because that is their only option for clean water when they’re out! Even though we moved to Canada when I was 6, we still haven’t completely gotten rid of that mentality either. My family still purifies AND boils all the water we drink.
I volunteered in Bali a couple summers ago and the situation there was even worst. Having to go get clean water just to brush your teeth, put in contacts, etc made me realize how much we take clean water for granted in Canada.
Nicole, I totally agree. Throughout my whole life living in Singapore I always consumed bottled water without thinking twice. Traveling around Asia it was necessary, and my parents even told me to brush my teeth with the bottled water. In our trip to Kenya it was a wake up call to how easy we have it here in Vancouver, and how there is no excuse to drink from bottled water in the city. Even coffee shops will give you a free glass of water if you ask kindly enough!
I’m not entirely sure what the solution is for this, except for increasing infrastructure in Asia, but here in Vancouver we should definitely all focus on only drinking tap water and never paying for plastic bottled water.
Hi Nicole,
Thank you for the post – safe tap water is something that I have definitely taken for granted growing up on Vancouver Island, where the tap water is some of the best in the world. For one year in high school, however, I lived in a small town outside Barcelona in Spain where the drinking water was deemed unsafe. As such, my host family whom I was placed with for the year bought litres upon litres of bottled water. They had to drastically increase their consumption of bottled water for me as I was accustomed to drinking up to two litres of water per day. Living in a place with poor water quality definitely increased my awareness for the value of clean drinking water, and it wasn’t until I got home that I realized how much I take water for granted. In a perfect world, we could provide clean drinking water to all countries around the world, however for now as marketing students we should focus on innovating sustainable ways to bottle and transport water to developing countries .
Ella