And Not a Little Crude Oil

by Donald L. Gibbon

A recent Christian Science Monitor article pointed out that 90% of the cost of producing a container of bottled water is in the bottle, the cap and the label.

This does not include the cost of transporting the water from its source to you, likely greater than all other costs. It seems absurd to me to think of transporting water from the French Alps or Fiji Islands to Pittsburgh when the water is of no proven merit relative to water available here. In other words, if you don’t know why this water is somehow better than what you get out of the tap, why do you pay a premium for it? Be honest now. Is it wishful thinking? Do you imagine that somehow you are more healthy because you do this? Or does it really taste that much better?

Facts: most bottled water is re-processed local tap water. Both Dasani and Aquafina are. They are processed out of the tap at the local bottling plants and bottled just for you! Dasani takes all the dissolved stuff out and then adds back in their own minerals to make it taste better!! (more…)

Published as an Op Ed piece in Lancaster Farming, the largest farm-oriented newspaper in the East, on November 24^th, Thanksgiving weekend, 2007

Here in urban Pittsburgh we just held a great Apple Festival, celebrating Southwest Pennsylvania’s long history of growing apples and making cider. We have at least thirteen orchards in the surrounding counties and seven cider makers, some with five generation histories on the same land. We also held the Second Annual Pro-Am Apple Pie Baking Contest. We’re well on our way to making Pittsburgh the “Apple- Pie-Baking Capitol of the World.” We’ll take you on if you’re interested in contesting that claim! We had thirty two pies in our contest last week… and a couple of hundred of us ate them! (more…)