问答题 Sparkling or still? Spring or tap? Imported or domestic? Flavored or plain? There is nothing simple about a drink of water, now that the bottled stuff outsells both milk and beer in the United States. In just a couple of decades, we've become a nation awash in bottled water—with tens of billions of plastic empties to prove it—transforming the Drinking Fountain on a city street into a dated curiosity akin to the public telephone booth.
How one of life's basic necessities became a heavily marketed beverage in a plastic bottle is the subject of Elizabeth Royte's new book Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It. Royte, an environmental journalist based in Brooklyn, N. Y. , shares the many, sometimes bizarre, unintended consequences of cracking open that plastic seal.