Water taste test shows bottles to be the same

A spandex-clad wo-man runs up a hill as a high-energy soundtrack plays to her every move. Sweat glistens on her face as she pants from exhaustion.

This television commercial is not an ad for running shoes or the latest deal being offered by one competing health clubs. It is an ad for Disani, a slickly packaged bottled water, cleverly marketed to young, athletic yuppies who buy anything they perceive to be even remotely hip. The number of brands on the market is only slightly less staggering than the tremendous success they share.

The 49er Shops at Cal State Long Beach are now offering Go Beach, their own cleverly marketed bottled water. At $1.00 per 16-ounce bottle, it tops the price list for bottled water sold on campus. Go Beach water competes with Disani ($1.00 per 20-ounce bottle) and Crystal Geyser ($1.50 per 33.8-ounce bottle) among others.

Go Beach water has been met with mixed reviews, but there is every indication it will succeed like the dozens of bottled waters in the cold drink sections of convenience stores all over the country.

The ultimate capitalist scheme can be found in the bottled water industry. The same liquid that falls from the sky on a regular basis can be sold to trendy people for unreasonable amounts of money by simply giving it the right image.

Disani is bottled by Coca Cola, the same company that sells bottled soft drinks for about one fourth the price of their water. With a little math, one can figure out that the Go Beach water costs five times the current price of gasoline.

Clearly, our desire to purchase much of this bottled water has little to do with quenching thirst. Designer bottles in an amazing number of different sizes and shapes have us reaching into coolers, regardless of price. Some are square, some are round, some have handles and some have pop-up tops. Labels with flashy colors and catchy slogans combined with manipulative advertising equal unlimited success for bottlers.

Many claim to be selling pure mountain spring water. But, the truth is, much of our regular drinking water is a type of spring water and most of it originated in the mountains, even when it was pulled from a well. All that water bottlers are selling is filtered water.

I sampled some of the bottled waters sold on campus and found no difference in taste between them. They all tasted exactly like the water that comes out of my kitchen tap via a $15 water filter I installed below the sink. That filter is guaranteed to purify approximately 5,000 gallons of water before it has to be changed. That is equal to about .0005 cents per 20-ounce bottle.

Water filtration pitchers that can be chilled inside the refrigerator cost about $15 and are guaranteed to purify approximately 40 to 50 gallons of water before requiring placement.

I realize the role convenience might play in our appetite for incredibly overpriced products like bottled water. The common attitude is we need it now and we need it cold. Occasionally, this can be enough to warrant paying 100 times the actual value of something.

But our capacity to regularly pay exorbitant prices for a small container of the most common liquid on the planet never ceases to amaze me.

John Caldwell is a journalism major at Cal State Long Beach.