Along the way, she investigates the questions that bottled water drinkers must inevitably answer about ownership rights to water and water sources, the implications and ramifications of paying for water, the safety of bottled water and the chemicals used to purify it. In this intelligent, eye-opening narrative, Elizabeth Royte does for water what Eric Schlosser did for fast food: she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that bring it from nature to our supermarkets. Only now, with the water industry trading in the billions of dollars, has the public begun to question what it is they are drinking and why. The brands have become so ubiquitous that consumers are hardly conscious that Poland Spring and Evian were once real springs in remote corners of Maine and France.

Having already surpassed milk and beer, and second now only to soda, bottled water is on the verge of becoming the most popular beverage in the country. One of Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year

She is the author of Garbage Land and The Tapirs Morning Bath. Elizabeth Royte has written for the New York Times Magazine, Harpers, National Geographic, Outside, Smithsonian, and the New Yorker. With a new afterword on the developing issues in clean water around the world. Bottlemania is the story of one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth centuryand one of the most troubling issues facing our environment today. She looks at the various sources of drinking water (including the embattled Maine town that Poland Spring exports from), the chemicals we dump into it to make it potable, and the real differences between tap and bottled. But whats the cost of all this waterfor us and for the environment? In this eye-opening book, Elizabeth Royte does for water what Michael Pollan did for food: She examines the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that surround it on its journey from distant aquifers to our supermarkets and homes. ∺n engaging investigation of an unexpectedly murky substance⁚fter you read it you will sip warily from your water bottle.” New York Times Book Reviewīottled water is on the verge of becoming the most popular beverage in the country.

Bottlemania by elizabeth royte