EP 608 Bottled Water Sales Tell us a Lot About our Confidence In Government

 

What can bottled water tell us about America? When you stop to think about it, an awful lot. The pervasiveness of bottled water and its dramatic sales increases is a clear sign that people have lost trust in basic services. The well- publicized cases of unsafe drinking water in Flint, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi send a clear signal to many other communities around the country, particularly those with less affluent, minority communities that they cannot trust the government to provide this most basic of life sustaining services—the delivery of safe drinking water. Communities respond in kind by participating in government and elections less and buying more bottled water which often is more expensive and environmentally destructive. In “Profits of Distrust: Citizen-Consumers, Drinking Water and the Crisis of Confidence in American Government”, David Switzer, Samantha Zuhlke and our guest, Manuel Teodoro explore an issue that is about far more than the water that comes from our tap.

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