Canadian churches boycott bottled water

From Newsmax:

Churches in Canada are urging congregants to boycott an unlikely target of religious zeal – bottled water.

"Water is seen increasingly as a saleable commodity, to make a profit, as opposed to our perspective of it being an element of life and good for all creation,” said David Hallman, an official with the First United Church in Kelowna, British Columbia, which is one of the churches barring bottled water from its building.

The St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ottawa used to sell bottled water at its fundraising events, but will no longer do so, congregant Heidi Geraets told The Globe and Mail in Toronto. Water, she said, is "a sacred gift” from God, and people should not debase it by turning it into a commercial item.

Rural residents who live near wells or springs used by bottlers have fought with the bottlers over groundwater depletion in their area. Congregants who object to bottled water sympathize with their concerns, according to the Globe and Mail.

Environmentalists also object to the still-growing bottled water market. "I can’t stand the whole idea,” said Sarah Miller, a water expert at the Canadian Environmental Law Association, citing the added garbage from discarded bottles and the emissions from trucks that deliver the water.

Still others assert that it make little sense to buy water that can cost more than gasoline when in some cases it is merely slightly altered municipal tap water.

But Elizabeth Griswold, executive director of the Canadian Bottled Water Association, said she rejects the view that bottled water is morally questionable and said that the decision to buy or not buy it should be an individual and not a religious one.

"Individual" vs. "religious"--not a very rigorous distinction there. It never occurs to the people who write these articles to quote someone who is neither moonbat nor Bottled Water official. Let's have normal guy Fred Johnson explaining that he doesn't particularly seek out bottled water as his drink of choice, but that the tap water in his city tastes bad and that it is convenient to give water bottles to the kids to put in their lunches.

Tags: bottledwater, moonbats, Canada