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The Story of Bottled Water
瓶装水背后不能说的秘密
This is a story about a world obsessed with stuff. It's a story about a system in crisis. We're trashing the planet. We're trashing each other. And we're not even having fun. The good thing is that when we start to understand the system, we start to see lots of places to step in and turn these problems into solutions.
这是个关于沉溺于物质的世界的故事。这是关于一个岌岌可危的系统的故事。我们正在糟蹋这个星球。我们正在互相糟蹋。而我们一点也不乐在其中。好消息是，当我们开始了解这个系统，我们开始看见许多能够干预之处，并将这些问题转变为解决方法。
One of the problems with trying to use less stuff is that sometimes we feel like we really need it. What if you live in a city like, say, Cleveland and you want a glass of water? Are you gonna take your chances and get it from the city tap? Or should you reach for a bottle of water that comes from the pristine rainforests of—Fiji? Well, Fiji brand water thought the answer to this question was obvious. So they built a whole ad campaign around it. It turned out to be one of the dumbest moves in advertising history. You see, the city of Cleveland didn't like being the butt of Fiji's jokes. So they did some tests, and guess what? These tests showed a glass of Fiji water is lower quality. It loses taste tests against Cleveland tap, and costs thousands of times more.
试着要使用少一点东西的问题之一是，有时候我们会觉得我们真的很需要它。如果你住在一个，比如说，像克里夫兰的城市，然后你想要一杯水呢？你会冒险喝自来水吗？还是你应该买一瓶来自原始雨林的瓶装水－－斐济的喔？嗯，斐济牌瓶装水觉得这个问题的答案再明显不过了。所以他们拿它大作广告。那最后变成广告史上最蠢的举动之一。你知道，克里夫兰市不喜欢被当成斐济牌瓶装水开玩笑的对象。所以他们做了些测试，你猜怎么样？测试结果显示斐济水的品质比较差。它在味道测试上输给克里夫兰的自来水，而且还贵了好几千倍。
This story is typical of what happens when you test bottled water against tap water. Is it cleaner? Sometimes, sometimes not. In many ways, bottled water is less regulated than tap. Is it tastier? In taste tests across the country, people consistently choose tap over bottled water. These bottled water companies say they're just meeting consumer demand. But who would demand a less sustainable, less tasty, way more expensive product, especially when you can get it for almost free in your kitchen? Bottled water costs about 2,000 times more than tap water. Can you imagine paying 2,000 times the price of anything else? How about a 10,000-dollar sandwich? Yet people in the U.S. buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week. That is enough to circle the globe more than five times. How did this come to be?
当你检测瓶装水和自来水的时候，这个故事是很典型的结果。它有比较干净吗？有时候有，有时候没有。在许多方面，瓶装水的品质管理不如自来水。它有比较好喝吗？在全国的味道测试中，人们总是选择自来水而非瓶装水。这些瓶装水公司说，他们只是在满足消费者的需求。但谁会需要一个比较不永续、比较难喝、还贵很多的产品？特别是你根本可以在厨房用几乎免费的价格喝到？瓶装水比自来水贵了大约 2,000 倍。你能想像用 2,000 倍的价格买其它东西吗？一个一万美金的三明治如何？但美国人每星期购买超过五亿瓶的瓶装水。那已经够绕地球不只五圈了。怎么会变这样？
Well, it all goes back to how our materials economy works, and one of its key drivers which is known as manufactured demand. If companies wanna keep growing, they have to keep selling more and more stuff. In the 1970s, giant soft drink companies got worried as they saw their growth projection starting to level off. There's only so much soda a person can drink. Plus it wouldn't be long before people began realizing soda is not that healthy and turned back to—gasp!—drinking tap water. Well, the companies found their next big idea in a silly designer product that most people laughed off as a passing yuppie fad. "Water's free!" people said back then. "What will they sell us next...air?" So how do you get people to buy this fringe product? Simple. You manufacture demand.
嗯，这全要追溯回我们物质经济运作的方式，还有一种被称为“制造出来的需求”的关键动力之一。如果公司想要持续成长，他们就得继续卖越来越多东西。 1970 年代，当大型汽水公司看到他们的业绩预期成长开始趋缓时，他们感到不安。一个人就只能喝那么多汽水啊。再加上人们很快就会了解汽水并不那么健康，然后回去－－我的天哪!－－回去喝自来水。这个嘛，那些公司在一个愚蠢的设计产品中发现了他们下一个伟大的点子，大部分的人都嘲笑那产品是一时的雅痞风潮。“水是免费的!”人们那时这么说。“他们接下来会卖什么给我们...空气吗？”所以你要怎么让人们买这个边缘商品？简单。你制造出需求。
How do you do that? Well, imagine you're in charge of a bottled water company. Since people aren't lining up to trade their hard-earned money for your unnecessary product, you make them feel scared and insecure if they don't have it. And that's exactly what the bottled water industry did. One of their first marketing tactics was to scare people about tap water, with ads like Fiji's Cleveland campaign. "When we're done," one top water executive said, "tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes." Next, you hide the reality of your product behind images of pure fantasy. Have you ever noticed how bottled water tries to seduce us with pictures of mountain streams and pristine nature? But guess where a third of all bottled water in the U.S. actually comes from? The tap!
你要怎么办到呢？嗯，想像你负责一间瓶装水公司。既然人们不排队用他们辛苦赚来的钱来换你那非必需的商品，你就让他们觉得如果不买的话很可怕、很令人不安。那正是瓶装水产业做的事。他们首要的行销技巧之一就是让人们害怕自来水，利用像斐济牌的克里夫兰广告。“我们成功后，”一个顶尖瓶装水公司的主管说道，“自来水就会被降级为洗澡水和洗碗水了。”接着，你将产品的真实面隐藏在纯净梦幻的影像之下。你曾注意过瓶装水试着怎样引诱我们吗，怎样用那些高山流水和原始大自然的照片诱惑我们？但猜猜美国三分之一的瓶装水其实是从哪来的？水龙头!
Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani are two of the many brands that are really filtered tap water. But the pristine nature lie goes much deeper. In a recent full page ad, Nestle said, "Bottled water is the most environmentally-responsible consumer product in the world." What?! They are trashing the environment all along the product's life cycle. Exactly how is that environmentally responsible? The problems start here with extraction and production where oil is used to make water bottles. Each year, making the plastic water bottles used in the U.S. takes enough oil and energy to fuel a million cars. All that energy spent to make the bottle, even more to ship it around the planet, and then we drink it in about two minutes? That brings us to the big problem at the other end of the life cycle—disposal.
百事公司的 Aquafina 和可口可乐的 Dasani 是众多品牌中两个真的是过滤后自来水的品牌。但是原始大自然的谎言还有更夸张的。在最近一个全版广告中，雀巢公司说：“瓶装水是全世界对环境最负责任的消费产品。”什么鬼？!那产品的整个生命周期都在糟蹋环境。那到底哪里对环境负责了？那个问题从石油的抽取和生产过程就开始了，而石油正是用来制作水瓶的。每年，用来制造美国境内使用的塑胶水瓶的石油和能源都足以供应一百万辆车了。那全部能源都被用来制作宝特瓶，更多能源被用来运送那宝特瓶到世界各地，然后我们差不多两分钟就喝完了？那将我们带到宝特瓶生命周期另一端的大问题－－废弃处理。
What happens to all these bottles when we're done? Eighty percent end up in landfills, where they will sit for thousands of years, or in incinerators, where they're burned, releasing toxic pollution. The rest gets collected for recycling. I was curious about where the plastic bottles that I put in the recycling bins go. I found out that shiploads were being sent to India. So I went there. I will never forget riding over a hill outside Madras where I came face-to-face with a mountain of plastic bottles from California.
我们喝完水之后这些宝特瓶会怎样？百分之八十的宝特瓶最后会被丢到垃圾掩埋场，它们会在这待上好几千年，或是被丢进焚化炉，它们在那被烧掉，释放出有毒的污染物质。其余的被收集起来回收。我很好奇我放进回收箱的那些塑胶瓶都到哪去了。我发现那一船船宝特瓶都被送到印度。所以我就去了那里。我永远不会忘记经过马德拉斯外围的一座小山，我在那亲眼见到一座来自加州的塑胶瓶山。
Now, real recycling would turn these bottles back into bottles. But that wasn't what was happening here. Instead, these bottles were slated to be downcycled, which means turning them into lower quality products that would just be chucked later. The parts that couldn't be downcycled were thrown away there, shipped all the way to India just to be dumped in someone else's backyard. If bottled water companies want to use mountains on their labels, it would be more accurate to show one of these mountains of plastic waste.
现在，真正的回收会让这些宝特瓶变回宝特瓶。但那不是在这里发生的事。相反地，这些宝特瓶预定被降级回收，意思就是将它们变成之后只会被扔掉的较低品质产品。不能被降级回收的部分就被丢弃在那里，一路海运到印度只为了要丢在别人家的后院。如果瓶装水公司想要在他们的商标上用山峦的图案，展示这其中一座塑胶垃圾山还比较精确。
Scaring us, seducing us, and misleading us—these strategies are all core parts of manufacturing demand. Once they've manufactured all this demand, creating a new multibillion market, they defend it by beating out the competition. But in this case, the competition is our basic human right to clean, safe drinking water. Pepsi's Vice Chairman publicly said, "The biggest enemy is tap water." They want us to think it's dirty, and bottled water is the best alternative. In many places, public water is polluted, thanks to polluting industries like the plastic bottle industry. And these bottled water guys are all too happy to offer their expensive solutions, which keep us hooked on their products.
恐吓我们、诱惑我们，还有误导我们－－这些策略全是制造需求的核心部分。一旦他们制造出这种需求，创造出新的几十亿商机的市场，他们就进而剷除市场竞争以巩固地位。但就瓶装水这例子，那对手正是我们饮用干净、安全的水的基本人权。百事公司的副董事长公开表示：“最大的敌人就是自来水。”他们想让我们觉得自来水很脏，而瓶装水是最好的选择。在许多地方，公共用水是受到污染的，多亏像是塑胶瓶产业那些制造污染的产业。然后这些瓶装水公司的家伙都摩拳擦掌地要提供昂贵的解决方法，让我们离不开他们的产品。
It is time we took back the tap. That starts with making a personal commitment to not buy or drink bottled water unless the water in your community is truly unhealthy. Yes, it takes a bit of foresight to grab a reusable bottle on the way out, but I think we can handle it. Then, take the next step: join a campaign that's working for real solutions, like demanding investment in clean tap water for all. In the U.S., tap water is underfunded by 24 billion dollars, partly because people believe drinking water only comes from a bottle!
是我们拿回自来水的时候了。那从许下个人承诺开始，发誓不要买或喝瓶装水，除非你社区的水真的很不健康。没错，出门时携带环保杯需要一点先见之明，但我想我们办得到。然后，采取下一步：加入一个为了真正的解决方法而努力的活动，像是要求为全民投资干净的自来水。在美国，自来水资金短缺 240 亿美元，这有部分是因为人们相信饮用水只来自塑胶瓶!
Around the world, a billion people don't have access to clean water right now. Yet cities all over are spending millions of dollars to deal with all the plastic bottles we throw out. What if that money was spent improving our water systems, or better yet, preventing pollution to begin with? There are many more things we can do to solve this problem. Lobby your city officials to bring back drinking fountains. Work to ban the purchase of bottled water by your school, your organization, or entire city. This is a huge opportunity for millions of people to wake up, and protect our wallets, our health, and the planet.
在全世界，有十亿人目前没办法取得干净的水。但各地的城市都在花好几百万元来处理我们丢掉的塑胶瓶。如果把那些钱花在改善我们的供水系统如何呢？或更棒的，用来防止最初的水污染这样如何呢？要解决这个问题，我们能做的还有很多。游说政府官员装回饮水机。努力让你的学校、机构，或整个城市不要购买瓶装水。这是一个几百万人能够觉醒的大好机会，而且还能够守护我们的钱包、健康，以及这个星球。
The good news is it's already started. Bottled water sales have begun to drop while business is booming for safe, refillable water bottles. Yay! Restaurants are proudly serving tap. And people are choosing to pocket the hundreds of thousands of dollars they would otherwise be wasting on bottled water. Carrying bottled water is on its way to being as cool as smoking while pregnant. We know better now. The bottled water industry is getting worried because the jig is up. We are not buying into their manufactured demand anymore. We will choose our own demands—thank you very much—and we are demanding clean, safe water for all.
好消息是这已经开始了。瓶装水销售量开始下跌，而安全、可重复使用的水瓶生意开始蓬勃发展。耶!餐厅正大光明地提供自来水。人们选择把几十万块钱留着，而不是浪费在买瓶装水上。携带瓶装水逐渐变得和孕妇抽烟一样完全不酷。我们现在更明白是非对错了。瓶装水企业开始担心，因为他们的诡计被拆穿了。我们对他们制造出来的需求再也不买帐了。我们会选择自己的需求－－非常感谢－－我们需要的是全民共享干净、安全的水。
