Apr 21, 2009 One hundred and fifty years ago this very day, London’s first free public water fountain that guaranteed clean drinking water was unveiled to much applause.
Somewhat less than 150 years ago, I wrote about it – so rather than recaping it all again, go here to read about it, and the charity which set up the fountain, and is still to this very day providing free clean water drinking supplies.
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drinking fountain, holborn
how quickly people take safe drinking water for granted.
Ironically, yesterday some awful organisation called the “Natural Hydration Council” had a full page spread in one of the free london giveaway papers. Purporting to be “an authoritative industry organisation dedicated to researching the science and communicating the facts about natural bottled water” they are, of course, merely a front set up by the likes of Evian, Highland Spring and Volvic to push their products. Their amusing “puff” includes humdingers like
“Drinking water is the healthiest way to hydrate” [is there any other way to hydrate, we wonder?].
“removing calories from what we drink might have more impact on weight loss than removing them from what we eat”, and
[bottled water is] certainly not an alternative to tap water”.
It also tries lamely to convince us that “bottled water has a lower carbon footprint than any other drink”.
How bewildered the Victorians would have been by all this.
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