The Frill and Folly of Dasani.
Americans are the embodiment of excess. Our malls. Our mammoth meal portions. Our heaping menus of cable channels (how many HBO channels does one REALLY need). I could go on here, but I won’t. I’m going to jump straight to the front of the line, cut past the bouncer, and smack the Grande Dame of Excess across the face with my smoking gun: Dasani Water.
I purchased a one-liter bottle of Dasani water at Publix, on sale, for $1.39. I’m thinking, hmm... 1 liter = .264 gallons. I do the match, and to my suprise, realize that I'm paying $5.29 per gallon of Dasani water.
Let me repeat that.
A gallon of Dasani water costs $5.29. I’m paying $5.29 for a gallon of liquid that is free and readily available from most any public tap, faucet, spicket?! I start to smell a rat.
Consider that a gallon of unleaded gas costs a national average of $1.75 per gallon right now. Ok boys and girls, for those of you that are feeling a bit dull right now, let me break this down for you.
Petroleum is a complex mixture of organic liquids called crude oil and natural gas.
These crude oils and natural gases are extracted from the ground, on land or under the oceans, by sinking an oil well and are then transported by pipeline and/or ship to refineries where their components are processed into refined products. (Authors note: In many instances, large democratic nations will send battalions of young men with guns, at a great cost of life, to secure these oil fields so the continued extraction of petroleum may continue).
The crude oil is largely a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds and relatively small quantities of other materials such as oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, salt and water. In the refinery, most of these non-hydrocarbon substances are removed and the oil is broken down into its various components, and blended into useful products (like gas).
Automotive gasoline is then trucked to a station near you for your consumption.
The $1.75 you're paying per gallon of gas includes the cost of crude oil to refiners, refinery-processing costs, marketing and distribution costs, and finally the retail station costs and taxes.
So now the common-sense-fairy on my shoulder is starting to thump my skull with a bat, and the veins in my temple are starting to throb under the stress of my brain trying to work this out. Certainly there is a reason that bottled WATER, the most plentiful resource on the planet, costs nearly 4 times the amount of refined petroleum.
I begin sleuthing and as web pages turn… the smell of rat increases.
"Surely Dasani is imported from a remote glacier,” I think. “A glacier so sacred, hosts of adventurers make pilgrimages to the glacier’s source, tapping the mystical fountain of life that is Dasani water…” Um. No.
Dasani is PURIFIED LOCAL WATER. And by local, I certainly don’t mean purified local glacier water, or purified local magical well water. I mean purified tap water. The same water is that is FREE to many of us, is being run through a few filters, a little UV light, sprinkled with a few minerals at a local warehouse, and bottled for our consumption. These blue bottles are sold to us at nearly FOUR TIMES THE COST OF REFINED PETROLEUM.
For those of you that might wrap themselves in a clinical health defense, there is a lot of evidence that bottled water has higher rate of contamination than actual municipal water. At the very least there are “Gaping Holes in Government Water Regulation”. Read the report. It’s a bottled water the “Super Size Me”.
To those of you who hate the taste of tap water, do yourself a favor a buy a filtered water pitcher from a reputable company like Brita. Based on the cost of replacement filters, Brita filtered water is costing you approximate 15 cents a gallon. ($6 per filter per 40 gallons of water).
So the next time you’re watching CNN, and you wonder why your average Afghan or Iraqi citizen is all that impressed with Joe Yankee, ask yourself what they’d think if they knew you paid $5.29 per gallon for something you already get for free.
Dasani. Frill and folly indeed.
Comments
Bravo! Bravo!
I couldn't have said it better myself. I have watched too many Dateline reports to even think of buying bottled "purified" tap water. I think tap water is much better for you anyway. I recently learned that our tap is good source of calcium. You know that lovely hard build-up you get around your faucet? Yep- you guessed it- calicium. So, in our house I say, don't replace that filter on the fridge water dispenser. I say load up on the calcium and save that $34.95 we would have spent on a filter at Sears. We could put that $34.95 to better use... like on gas. (We are nowhere near the national average when gas costs us $2.21 a gallon!)
Once again, you did a magnificent job on exposing the truth!
P.S. Per your qustion on where we live, no, we do not live in San Diego any longer. We live about 10 minutes north of the San Diego County line in a place called Temecula. (This where everyone in San Dieog comes to buy a house because they are more affordable. Then, everyone commutes to San Diego to work therefore clogging the I-15 resulting in a 4 hour round trip commute.) The Temecula valley is all about wine and hot air ballons. Wine counrty is a beautiful place to drive through. We live on the northeastern egde of Temecula, so we get a little bit of elevation. The picture of us in the snow was the first snow they have had in 20 years. It was crazy! Flowers getting frozen, palm trees covered in snow- it was quite the scene. I had to rush and pick all my lemons so they wouldn't freeze. It has not snowed since, but we keep hoping :)
Posted by: WendyB | January 6, 2005 11:46 PM
And if I did my math right (which I probably didnt), extremely stupid retarded people pay $2624.00 per gallon for this 75% oxygen/25% "water liquid" mixture.
Just in case your comment page doesnt support HTML tags - http://www.questmanifest.com/Oxymist.html
Posted by: Anonymous | January 7, 2005 11:12 AM
Agua baby, agua!
you make me thirsty for some beer instead... hehehe! anywho, this has nothing to do with el agua, but thought you might like: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6791368/
Posted by: El Guapo | January 7, 2005 02:43 PM
yo- brilliant dude. I just posted this on the main page of BeneathTheNoise.com.
Posted by: Dan Caplin | January 10, 2005 12:53 PM
Matt! Come on dude! You're being a tad harsh don't you think? First off that fucking water (among other products) pays my mortgage. Don't get me wrong...I hate the stuff. It tastes like watered down rag. But to look at the other side of the argument...first, water is not free. All water costs something. It costs money to treat the stuff. Very few sources can be drunk without any purifying. That's why all those people in the wake of the tsunami have no water. It's plentiful just not drinkable. Secondly, when I buy bottled water it's because I'm on the go and don't want to stuff my pie hole with soda. Why shouldn't the price be competetive to those other drinks at the market? It's capitalism at its greatest. When consumers get off their fat lazy ass and decide not only to pay for overpriced water, but stop putting a constant stream of toxins in their body we might see some sort of sanity within the system. Well, just thought I'd add my two cants. I'm gonna go now and drink bottled water while pumping premium gas into my Excursion. Then I'm gonna drive the scenic route to Wal-mart and steal a motorized scooter from some obese person and drive it around the store purposely aiming at women and children. It's moments like those that make life worth living again.
Posted by: stinky | January 14, 2005 12:47 PM
Ah stinky... you miss my point I think. That most americans are fat, excursion-driving, Walmart-shopping, pie-hole stuffing beneficiaries of a wonderful capitalist system is not contested here. Nor I am outing the bottled water industry as a whole. I'm outing DASANI in particular.
I think that the argument that potable drinking water is free to the citizens and tourists inside the borders of this country is reasonable. Think drinking fountains, bathroom tap water, etc. Now, if you to split hairs and argue that the costs of state run water purification systems are paid for in tax dollars as well as private consumption dollars, then fine. It only goes to strengthen my argument that DASANI, bottled TAP water, is not only emblematic of self-destructive lemming-esque American consumerism, but is an out and out con. Especially considering the complete lunacy of the cost, which I'm sure is on par and set by those who legitimately import water from exotic locales.
In fact, I have no complaint against Evian, Voss, and the like. At the very least their product originates from artesian wells, or glacier springs, and you pay for the import and distribution of such. In those cases, you are paying for something that you don't already have.
I still maintain the frill and folly of DASANI.
Posted by: Mattlandia Himself | January 14, 2005 01:40 PM
Yes, you are right. I would argue that the water that is "free" at fountains and such are paid for through tax dollars and higher costs of goods. I totally understand what you are saying. There is one other minor detail. Like everything at the world of Coke, Dasani was introduced to the market after months of testing. It is water from a municipal source, but there is a "flavor" that only Coke would dare contract. So, my arguement is that Dasani does taste better than fountain water. Plus, there isn't any nasty cooties in the bottle unlike from the last person who drank at the fountain. Please understand that I did not want to know that info about Dasani. It's just that my boss is a freak who works at Coke and loves it more than his first born. The guy freaked out at me once for eating Lay's potato chips. "That's a Pepsi product, you communist!" Really, he said that. I can't believe I spent ten minutes of my life debating water. Anyhting keeping me from writing a powerpoint presentation is worth my time I guess. Have a great time in Utah. Make sure my Natty doesn't hurt her knee again. Those trucks can be tricky.
Posted by: stinky | January 15, 2005 12:07 PM