Water

Let’s talk about water—the life-giving liquid that makes up most of us and that we can’t survive without for more than three days. In our boundless ingenuity, we’ve managed to turn it into a luxury product.

Picture this: A bottle of water from Fiji. Yes, Fiji—the small tropical island thousands of kilometers away from anywhere. That water gets pumped out of a pristine aquifer, into plastic bottles, and shipped halfway across the globe to be displayed in vending machines with LED screens that entice passers by with serene images of paradise: untouched waterfalls, lush greenery, and the promise of luxury hydration. And you? You pay for the privilege of buying water, glorified into a lifestyle statement.

Even though the price you pay for a sip of luxury bottled water is absurd. The price on the bottle doesn’t come close to representing the real cost. Behind it lies a global web of industries: plastics, shipping, logistics, marketing, energy, information technology and more. All of them profiting from something that quite literally falls from the sky. Hidden costs ripple outward. The oil burned for transport, waste from producing and later on discarding bottles, the IT infrastructure to enable the global operation and the energy used by the servers to host the advertisements that tell you this water is somehow better than the water from your tap. The ecosystem pays. Society pays. In the end, we all pay.

And here’s the thing—there’s probably a tap just around the corner, offering perfectly drinkable water. The miracle of clean water is as simple as turning on a faucet. Public waterworks brought clean drinking water to every home—no ads, no shipping containers, no financial empires built on something as basic as hydration. It’s clean, reliable, and ordinary. Too ordinary for continued commercial growth.

But scarcity is creeping in. And with it, alternatives that don’t rely on industry start to make sense again. Dig a well. Collect rainwater from your rooftop. Reroute a stream, filtering it for your different needs, you don’t flush the toilet with drinkable water—that’s as absurd as bottling it. Managing your own water doesn’t just make sense; it makes water personal again. No transactions. No waste. No middlemen. Just a source of life, as it’s always been.

We used to be able to bend down, cup our hands and sip water from the cool, clear flow of a stream. It sounds unimaginable, doesn’t it? In a world where most waterways have been poisoned by industry, the thought feels like a distant fantasy. But it wasn’t always like this. And maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t have to stay this way. What if we reversed the damage? What if rivers ran clean again, lakes sparkled with life, and water could once again be trusted?

The truth is, water was never meant to be a commodity. It was never meant to be bottled, branded, or sold at a premium. It’s a gift, as simple and vital as the air we breathe. So next time you see a bottle of water calling your attention from the window of a vending machine, pause. Think about everything it took to put it there. And then imagine what it would take to drink freely again.