Water, water, nearly everywhere

We know that most of our globe is covered by water. Most of it is salty and not fit to drink.

But in most of our country, we are fortunate that water is good, plentiful, drinkable, and that there are good processing plants to assure that plenty of cheap, pure, health-producing water is available at the turn of a tap.

So surely one of the most amazing developments in recent decades, in our country and many others throughout the world, is the popularity and availability of bottled water for sale at stores.

How does bottled water "compete" with much cheaper tap water?

We are told that 3 billion cases of bottled water are sold each year! And there are a number of popular brands.

But there are problems in addition to the cost of bottled water: There are complaints about the careless discard of millions of plastic water bottles, not only in garbage landfills but many irresponsibly tossed out of car windows along our streets and highways.

We are, indeed, peculiar people, willing to pay a lot for bottles of otherwise easily accessible pure water and then creating a serious waste problem by discarding the containers in the wrong places.