The first time I enountered bottled water was on my first trip to Europe in 1973. Back then, the thought was that, other than in the United States, there was no such thing as potable water coming straight from the tap. It wasn't just Latin America where you were in danger of acquiring Montezuma's revenge. The fear was that you could end up with dystentery pretty much anywhere in the world just by drinking the water. Other than Canada and, as I recall, the British Isles and Ireland, where I don't remember bottled water being a thing back in 1973. (And where I do remember meeting an older, experienced traveler - I believe she was in her late twenties - in a London hostel who told us that we were much more likely to become constipated on our travels than have diarrhea.)
Once we hit The Continent, however, we somehow knew that, if we were going to drink water, it better be from a bottle, not a tap. And where we discovered a preference for acqua senza gas - still water, rather than water with bubbles (or "sparkling water"). There were times when we didn't have bottled water with us, and on more than one occasion we brushed our teeth using Coke to wet our brushes.
But in France, we had our first encounter with bottled water, and that was with sparkling Perrier. (We soon learned to buy larger and cheaper bottles of grocery store water, but our first time was with Perrier.)
Anyway, somewhere along the line, bottled water became a big thing in the United States, too. Even though our tap water, as long as you didn't live in places like Flint, Michigan, or Jackson, Mississippi, was just fine.
If I do get a bottle of water, it tends to be Poland Springs, which hails from Maine. I try to avoid Dasani, which is just tap water in a plastic bottle. But most of the water I glug down is Boston tap, unfiltered, that I keep in old wine bottles in the fridge so I always have a nice cold drink of water handy.
Bottling, transporting, recycling (admittedly, more or less a 'ha!', even if you do separate out your recyclables) are making us all more conscious of the negative impacts of consuming bottled water.
And now:
France's multi-billion euro mineral water companies are under the spotlight because of climate change and growing concerns about the industry's environmental impact.
At issue is whether some world-famous brands, notably the iconic Perrier label, can even continue calling themselves "natural mineral water".
A decision in the Perrier case is due in the coming months. It follows revelations in the French media about illicit filtration systems that have been widely used in the industry, apparently because of worries about water contamination, after years of drought linked to climate change.
"This really is our Water-gate," says Stéphane Mandard, who has led investigations at Le Monde newspaper. "It's a combination of industrial fraud and state collusion."
"And now there is a real Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Perrier." (Source: BBC)
Sacre bleu!
Last year, French media broke the story that a lot of France's mineral water "had been illegally treated, either with ultra-violet light, carbon filters or ultra-fine micro-meshes commonly used to screen out bacteria."
The treated water is perfectly potable. It's just that water branded as natural "is supposed to be unaltered between the underground source and the bottle. That is the whole point of it."
When I think of natural water - like the water from my quasi local buds in Poland Springs, Maine - I naturally envision burbling mountain streams, maybe with pine trees and snow along their banks. I hope that's still the case with Poland Springs water, but for Perrier (and the other big French brands, like Vichy - which I wouldn't drink because of its name - and Evian, which I find tastes greasy), having anything unnatural about their water could be disaster.
You must remember, this is in France, where the country goes haywire if they find that someone is marketing sparkling white wine as champagne if it's from anywhere other than a specific area in France. They are complete terrors when it comes to terroir. So the country is way rocked by this scandal, and there are allegations of coverup and conspiracy between/among some government officials and Perrier to suppress the bad news that Perrier has been goosing its water by using something called "micro-filtration." And Perrier may well lose its government-granted ability to be able to label their wares as "natural mineral water."
Meanwhile, whatever the sitch is with Poland Springs, we all need to lose any imaginings about Perrier's burbling mountain stream origin.
Far from the remote mountain landscape you might imagine, Perrier's water is pumped from deep aquifers in the coastal plain between Nîmes and Montpellier, a short drive from the Mediterranean. The area is populous, heavily-farmed, and very hot.
"There has been a big climatic shift since 2017," says Haziza. "For five years there was a succession of droughts, which were particularly badly felt in the south."
"All the aquifers were affected. This means not just the upper water-table, which is where everyday tap water comes from. We can now see that the deeper aquifers – which the companies thought were protected – are also being hit.
"The unforeseen is taking place. We are moving from a period in which companies could draw water from the deep aquifers and be sure they would be replenished, to a period in which it's obvious the whole system cannot go on."
This will, of course, impact other bottlers of natural water. Because of its location, Perrier may just be the French version of the canary in the coalmine.
And, naturally, global warming is going to impact the aquifer everywhere. Bigly. Water use is always an issue in California and in the Southwest. While New England, too, is impacted by droughts, our water supply (and delivery) has been largely first rate. So far.
Forget about worrying about Perrier. (Or about Poland Springs.) Are we going to reach a point where when we turn on the tap, what trickles out is a trickle of something brackish and brownish that needs to be boiled before drinking and filtered through cheesecloth?
I've already used up my sacre bleu ration. So guess it will have to be sacre merde!
--------------------------------------------------------------
Image Source: Grocery.com
No comments:
Post a Comment