I’ve said it for years. Though mainly to Mel. And mainly on holiday. I’ve said: HOW MUCH FUCKING BOTTLED WATER DO WE NEED???? Because she worries about dehydration. In Scotland. Where the risk of dehydration is seven hundred and ninety-six thousand times lower than the risk of drowning. But water we buy. And worry about buying. So we buy more. Keep spares. Fill the car. Not with petrol, but bottles of water. Water, water everywhere but… well it is for drinking.

And today in the paper there is total vindication for my aquaphobia (not rabies, the other one). ‘Plastic bottle menace rivals global warming’!!!! (I put the exclamation marks myself because it was in The Times. If it had been in the Sun or Mail they’d already have been there).

We (and I speak for everyone in the entire world here, except probably me) buy a million bottles every minute. Ok, not all water, there’s all those vile brilliant orange and radio-active green sugary drinks that kids buy too. But bottled water is the main culprit.

“Oh, I only drink Patagonian Trench Water” (£7.26 for 500mls) “because the bottle is recyclable and no sheep have to die making it”. And yes, a lot of bottles are ‘recyclable’ but you have to collect them first. And then assume there is sufficient recyclability in the world to cope with them. Otherwise they just end up in land-fills and most certainly on beaches, in rivers, on every single green (and bottled) field in the land. And then they break up and enter the food chain. Everything’s less recylcable when its hurled out of a car window.

Drink Evian today; kill a fish tomorrow. That’s gonna be my next tattoo.

Every other person walking round the City is carrying a bottle of water. In London. 17 degrees outside. And raining. Yet walking from the office to the coffee shop, you need water. Just in case. Its almost as annoying a ‘badge’ as the phone carried in the other hand. Held just in front of the face. Its a statement. “I drink water”. Not a powerful statement but nonetheless its a club. The water-drinking-to-excess club. Or as it will now be known: The Trout-Murderers Collective!!!

I’d like to point out that whisky comes in glass bottles only. And coffee comes in paper cups (ridiculously, they’re virtually all un-recyclable). Coke comes in cans (tomorrow’s Vauxhall Aventurama).

So next time you buy a bottle of water; think again. And just throw it away. Errrr…

Happy dry Thursday

A xxxx