Oscar Lee's Blog

Bottled water is something that I encountered on a daily bases. However, after I watched 'The story of bottled water' by Annie Leonard. I realised the story behind a simple bottled water goes far beyond just its appearance level. Firstly, it's a waste of natural resource. All the factories that using unrenewable e.g. petrol to produce the plastic bottles are heavily polluting the Earth's nature environment. When I buy a bottle of water, I'm encouraging them to stab mother Nature few more times!. Secondly, the economic flow and marketing strategy that go behind a bottle of water is a well-known fact. Thirdly, the so all recycle scheme is just another scandal and smoke screen that the fat merchant established in order to play illusion on consumer thus fatten his pocket with cash. All those used bottles were 'down-cycle' instead or 'recycle'. I discovered this fact from reading the book 'cradle to cradle' by William McDonough & Michael Braungart. It's totally irresponsible to dump all the toxic waste into the water resources of any third world country. Sadly, I can't understand myself why I still buy the bottled water or dinks occasionally. I suppose impulse buying behaviour was part of it. I grew up in Hong Kong and it's a very convenience place to get bottled water. There is always a convenience store selling them nearby where you're standing. I made a promise to myself, I'll stop buying bottle drinks from today and fill my bottled water up as often as possible as a consumer. In a design perspective, this problem perhaps can link to a PSS design opportunity that can rectify this ill behaviour. There is no mean to eliminate the corrupted merchants, however I will make sure any products that I design will not fall into the same trap again. After watching this video I own up to the responsibility by not buying any bottled drinks and think of the moral of the story of the bottled water whenever I design something so that I will not make the same mistake twice.