by Sarah Woodson
(Stratford, Ontario, Canada)
On Fridays, after school, me and my friends go to a yoga class. My mom was late again, so I went to the vending machine to get a coke or something.
I saw another girl from my yoga class walking up to it too. I stood off to the side, and opened it taking a sip. I watched her spend two dollars and fifty cents on a bottle of water. I found it hilarious because there was a water fountain not far away at all from the vending machine.
"What's wrong? Afraid of the fountain?" I asked her, joking around. "Oh no, I have no problem with tap water" she said. "I cat-sit on Fridays for my neighbour who goes to Ottawa every Friday for a business trip." That's why you need a bottle of water. "well, the neighbour INSISTS on only drinking, cooking and even cleaning with bottled water, and the same goes for her cat." Really? I asked "Yup. Gotta go, see you on Monday!" she replied.
Editor's Comment: Thank you for this Sarah. This does sound a little extreme, but we are not surprised by this.
There have been stories for many years about some of the finest restaurants in Paris using Evian to wash the dishes. Whether they did it for real or - as widely suspected - for a tax scam, who knows? But your story is not the first and will not be the last.
For many, there is a certain loss of logic that around a billion people on earth do not have access to clean, drinkable water, but there is over another one billion people that water transported around the world in bottles. It certainly seems as though using mineral water for cleaning might be a step too far.