A Glimpse of the Future

by DiDi LeMay

Last week I treated myself to a spa day. As I sat waiting to get my nails done, one of the girls asked me if I would like a glass of water. How nice of her. Her tone of voice was as if she was offering me a glass of champagne.

I looked at her, surprised. Initially, I thought she was being sarcastic, but no, she was totally sincere. This is quite a change from years gone by.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I visited a friend and if they had offered me a glass of water, I would have been insulted. “Water,” I’d think to myself, "Is that all you can or want to offer me?"  I would think of them as being a cheap host or hostess. Water!  Don’t you have anything better to offer me than water?

Times have changed and water is now revered as a specialty drink. The girl at the spa brought back a small but fancy carafe and a glass and poured the water.  She presented it as if it were a precious commodity. And there lies the rub. Water as a commodity!

Water is a resource and people have an inherit right to use it.  It is the source of life itself! Of the 95% planet’s water, only 2.5% is fresh water. Maybe the younger generation has it right; it is precious. We need to treat water with the respect it deserves. Without water, there is no life.

This is where, in our society, it has become a precarious situation. We have used water as if it were an endless natural resource. This has changed and it is being used more carefully. It isn’t wasted as much, at least for the most part.

But there is also the other side of the coin. As the general public started to realize we cannot be so wasteful, the beverage companies also realized how precious water is. A lot of the companies jumped on the bandwagon. They saw dollar signs.  People were certainly going to buy water. After all, everyone needs to drink water. The companies were more than willing to provide it. Of course, for a price!

A few years ago, the companies started a marketing campaign, a very successful one. They realized how much money could be made. They convinced the world that the water from the tap isn’t safe. Bottled water was much better and also much more expensive. The corporations convinced so many people to buy bottled water. Hard earned money is paid and plastic bottles fill up our landfills as bottled water continues to be purchased.

A bottle of water of 500 ml or 750 ml  is priced around  $1.00 to $2.75. The cheapest I have seen is $1.00. Now, just think, 500 ml is half a litre. Two bottles are one litre, which comes to $2.00 per litre.  The price of gas is hovering around $1.20 per litre. Water is more expensive than gas in our cars!

People are getting the point.  In day-to-day use, frugal with water is the name of the game.  Water is not left running while brushing our teeth or doing the dishes. There is “gray water “– slightly used water to water the lawn and plants, to name a few ways people are preserving water. And to top it all off, reusable water bottles are now in fashion. Bottled water is being sold less and less.

Sitting at the spa that day, I had a glimpse of the future, where water is treated as the noble liquid it is.