Only a few days ago, the Region of Waterloo agreed to ban the sale of bottled water in their buildings and at their events. Now, I know that there was some people who didn’t like the idea. Sure – why shouldn’t we be allowed to decide where we buy our drinking water? Well, unfortunately people are so influenced by the media and people around them that they fall into money-burning traps like bottled water.
I know that there’s been some cases in Canada where municipal water failed. Certainly the Walkerton situation might have made people trust bottled water more than their home-grown municipal water. But let me pose this question: Of the millions of people in Canada who drink municipal water every single day, how many actually get sick due to contaminated municipal water? I’m quite curious what the probability would be that any one cup of water in Canada would be contaminated. Compare that to the probability that a bottle of water includes some form of contamination or some yet unknown carcinogen, and I would argue that municipal water is just as safe as water from a bottle.
Canada has the third largest amount of renewable freshwater in the world. It’s quite unfortunate when you consider the state of water availability throughout the world and in a place like Canada which houses such a vast amount of freshwater, how can we justify spending extra money on bottled water? If you have legitimate concerns about the safety of your municipal tap water, bring it up with the municipality. There’s no reason why drinking water in Canada should be viewed as unsafe.
In conclusion, my favourite part of the article at the Record (“ is this:
I hope his use of past tense in the article is accurate.
