Water and Vandana Shiva

Wow! That’s scary to think about. I had heard that bottled water was just the same as tap water, but I had no idea the extent of the problem. I didn’t know that said bottled water companies were causing so much destruction and pain. This whole issue makes me feel really grateful that I live in the United States, were I don’t have to worry where I’m going to get my clean ater from.
I think the best way to incorporate water rights into the conversation of democratizing biology is draw the parallels between the bottled water companies and the manufactured seed companies. In essence they are the same thing. Both are trying to take things that our ancestors had for free and turn them into things they can make a profit from. There is also the added parallel that both are doing more harm then their proposed good. This needs to be added to the conversation of democratizing biology because it’s going to affect us all in the long run. While we might be safe from toxic and polluted waters now (in the United States), we won’t always be. Just as monocultures are slowly killing our soil, if we let it, the bottled water will bleed our planet dry of useable water. And that is why we need to open this conversation up to include water right, because (in my mind) these issues are made of the same things.

This past summer, I was a chemistry intern at a company. My main responsibility was working with a method to purify tap water. In this research we utilized a filtering method called reverse osmosis. High pressure is applied to water on one side of a selective membrane. The selective membrane allows purified water to move through leaving behind the ions and larger molecules. In this process, you get purified water (permeate) on one end and contaminated water with ions and large molecules (concentrate) on the other. I was able to experience firsthand how much water was wasted in this process. On average for every gallon of purified water, 2-3 gallons of water is wasted.

At the company, purified water was not drinking, but rather to make a solution that has less contamination in the end product. In a sense, this idea was proposed to keep cost low and was determined more efficient for its consumers. This is how they planned on marketing their idea. Many people, like in this company I interned for, do not think of water as precious and how valuable it is to our society. I believe the first step is to educate people about the values of water, it is the source of all life, but yet we allow it to be tainted and unusable.

As a country, even as a world, we need to start doing something about this. At some point or another, as the video proposed, we will not have enough healthy drinkable water. This is not a problem that we can just push onto the next generation; by that time the crisis would be imminent. Like the climate crisis, if we do not do take action, it will be too late and irreversible.

As with the seeds, water companies will only gain more profit as the worlds’ usable water supply dwindles and life on earth will slowly vanish. Like Vandana Shiva stated in “Democratizing Biology,” all life is equally precious to everyone, we should not lessen the life quality of others to maximize profit. We need to take action!

You would never think that we, as humans, would ever run out of water but now that's the case. Human beings have consumed more natural resources in the last forty years than ever before. Pretty much no matter where you get your water from, there's always going to be something in it that could be harmful. Think about it; water, the basic necessity for life, may be the thing that could result in illness or even death now. Bottled water really grew enormously when people heard that tap water could contain mercury. But who is to blame for the huge expansion of bottled water. The government, mass media general public, or the companies themselves? Pretty much all are to blame in any way you look at it. We live in a capitalist country, so almost all natural resources are things that have to be bought. However almost all the time these companies are focusing more on the money rather than the consequences and as long as people keep buying it, they'll keep producing it. Even though know most people know that bottled water is the same as tap water and even the FDA has put regulations on things companies can put on their labels for water such as: mountain springs or purified. The case against water bottles is one that I am not sure if we could even win. These companies have very big wallets and a lot of friends in the government and right now since everyone is focusing on the economy, getting rid of bottle water means the lose of jobs. It unfortunate because the things we are doing now are going to end up resurfacing as big issues. Like when all our clean water is gone because we put it into little plastic bottles, then when were done with it we throw the bottle is landfills where they will sit forever.

I agree with the first comment. It is really scary to think that we may run out of clean supplies of water in the somewhat near future. The most vital thing to human life is becoming more scarce as time goes on. And obviously it is already a huge issue in developing countries where you're lucky if you find even a couple of gallons of water a day. It sucks that water has become this huge industry that thrives on money and business when the people who need the water most don't have any money. I also agree that water rights should definitely have its place in the conversation about democratizing biology. It is not only the food business we should be worried about but the water business also. There is something very wrong with having to pay for something that has always been free to humans throughout the history of the world, whether it be food or water. A lot of the same things go on in both the food industry and the water industry. They advertise about the most clean water or the most healthy food when in reality both are processed or altered and are not as clean or healthy as the industry makes us think. Still there are some major differences between water rights and agriculture. We have programs that focus on hunger and all those issues surrounding having no food when a more vital issue should be "thirst". Millions of people in developing countries should have access to clean water if they have money or not. It is vital to life and without water there would be no people alive to starve. The water issue in my mind seems more urgent and we've got to find a way to get clean water to every human. I know that many programs and organizations are already working on this issue and have had some success, but the focus of the water industry is not to get water to everyone who needs it, it is solely to make a profit.