In our environmentally challenged age we are learning to live with new ethically loaded terms such as carbon footprint. What about water footprint? And yet…major charity projects taking place in Africa and Asia are concerned with providing adequate, clean and safe drinking water. A major consumer market now exists for bottled uncarbonated water, which is drunk in the western world not by the litre but by the loch. Running, walking, working at the desk, driving, talking, in countless social situations people now carry a bottle in one hand and a mobile in the other.
How long before a night at a classical concert includes as the norm, the soloist trumpeter having a quick swig of Highland Spring while awaiting the next cue for entry? Has anyone yet come across a preacher who preaches with a bottle in the hand – or at least at the lectern? By the way I remember a Glasgow church years ago in the 1970’s was famous for ensuring a bottle of fizzy Schweppes Tonic water was placed in the pulpit for the preacher’s refreshment!
Byron has an interesting post on the current bottled water market, carbon footprints and a world where the water is ill divided. He is quoting from the Sydney daily newspaper acccount (see the link here). Amongst the environmentally relevant and justice issue comments Byron makes are:
• higher levels of bacteria than quality tap water;
• transfer of toxins from the plastic bottle to the water;
• the production of a plastic bottle creates 100 times more carbon emissions than making a glass bottle;
• 1.5 million tonnes of plastic water bottles are created each year, only a fraction of which are subsequently recycled;
• bottled water costs about 10,000 times as much as tap water;
• and perhaps worst of all, the privatisation of water amongst the rich removes the incentive for ensuring high quality tap water for all.
So. What is a responsible Christian to do? The cup of cold water that Jesus recommended as an act of compassion, presupposed it was clean and a gift. At the very least perhaps we should opt to pay, as an act of discipleship, a personal tax on the bottled water we drink, by ensuring that we are financial supporters of those charities desperate for money to sink wells, buy purification plants, ensure clean safe water is supplied to those for whom bottled water, bought and drunk in a society with constant, clean, running water on tap, is unimaginable, inexplicable, and perhaps inexcusable. How big is my water footprint?
I find all of this complexity, my unavoidable implication and participation in a society that now trades globally, creates an underlying uneasiness, a sense that no matter what I do, someone can show me connections and consequences I hadn’t foreseen, but can’t easily avoid. Fairness, justice, generosity, humanity, responsibility…these are virtues it’s hard to impose on a market – and one way or another I can’t live outside the market. But on the other hand, I am a follower of Jesus, and one way or another, that cup of cold water, whether it comes from a bottle or not, isn’t for my consumption but for the comfort of the other. HMMMM?
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