Kitsch'n'Zinc

It's not often you'll find me singing the praises of a politician and when the politician in question is an American one, it's almost unheard of, but I'll be raising a glass this week-end to the magnificent gesture of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Lording it over the home of hype and beautiful people, it took a brave man and a former restaurateur at that, to call in his former colleagues in the restaurant business and formally request them to stop serving bottled water and start serving local tap water instead. The mayor made international headlines last year when he banned city government from spending tax dollars on bottled water for its employees, saying the containers clog landfills and pollute the environment. His new request that restaurants make the switch is just that - a request, but it's a significant gesture.
I reckon that bottled water must be the marketing success of the century and at the same time one of the biggest scams ever devised to squeeze money out of the ignorant consumer, ignorant in every sense of the word. How we were ever conned into parting with exorbitant amounts of cash for something that we literally have on tap at home must remain one of life's greatest mysteries. There are more stringent controls in place to ensure that what comes out of that tap in our kitchens is bacteria free, non contaminated, filtered and pure than any controls placed on the bottlers of water. Add to that the fact that the bottled variety ranges from 100 to 1000 times the cost of the tap variety and you've really got to start scratching your head. Of course this hasn't been lost on the bean counters at Pepsi and Coke and they're perfectly happy to filter and bottle the municipal water and sell it to idiots who seem to be more concerned about the bottle than the contents.