Opawa Baptist Church :: a resting place

stirring the waters: water4life

Water4life. Needed physically and spiritually. Sunday 12, 19, 26 - We are stirring the waters - 5 minutes to provoke. Followed by Saturday 18 and 15; 4-5:15 pm, a time to debate and question and pray. The first stirring was on Sunday - Christian should boycott bottled water. The notes are as follows ...

Stirring the waters
Bottled water is terrible
Boycott bottled water
Discuss 4-5.15 Saturday, in the foyer.

Three pictures from my head:

1. Kayaking the Abel Tasman
(Before bottled water)
3 days of water boiling, arrive at Tonga Bay,
walk to Awaroa Lodge
flush loos and filtered water

2. Nicaragua
(Again before bottled water)
25 New Zealanders and Australians picking coffee.
Two people each day spending day boiling water.

Learning to brush my teeth without water
Too much fizzy drink
Hotel shower raw sewage – clean water continuum.

3. Driving Auckland to Ruapehu, now in post-water bottle days
Horrified by the number of water bottles littering the side of the road.
Travellers with no envt conscience.

In fact the bottled water industry produces 1.5 million tons of plastic pa, over 90% of which is in non-renewal plastic – takes 1000yrs to biodegrade.

We have gone a bit mad on this bottled water thing.

78% of tap water in NZ is approved by the Ministry of Health as fine for drinking. The other 22% is prob OK too, but water supplies that service less than 5000 pax don’t get monitored in the same way.

So for most of us,
we have perfectly good water in our taps.

That’s good news.
For us
Also for the water bottling industry.

1999 study

Putaruru in Waikato,
aspires to be the water capital of NZ.
60% of NZs bottled water comes from its Blue Spring.

BUT
Ironically part of the town has substandard water pipes 8 mill to fix
The local council can’t afford it.
Putaruru – water capital has stink water

However Putaruru’s issues are mild
when compared with
More than 1.5 billion pax have no access to safe drinking water
12 mill people killed each year by diseases caused by unsanitary water.

Worldwide bottled water single largest growth area among all beverages. Asia Pacific = fastest growing area.
Est for growth NZ and Oz 14-30% pa

Some of the best drinking water in the world comes from our taps, yet in 2003 NZ paid $27.5 mill to swig 40 mill litres of bottled water.

Bottled water costs 1000x more than from the tap
More than petrol.

Consumerism gone mad.

Join me.
Refill don’t buy.

Boycott bottled water.

Posted by opawa at June 14, 2005 04:01 PM