Thursday, July 29, 2010

disposable plastic water bottles - not cool



BEAUTY AND THE BOTTLE

 Have you ever noticed how much energy is put into designing bottles? Go into either a liquor store or a perfume store, and take a look at the beautiful shapes, textures and colours that are used to create the bottle. In more than a few instances, the cost of the package is much more than the cost of the contents. This shows that we care about beauty, and how much we care is often a reflection of the value we place on the contents.



 Now take a look at a throw away plastic water bottle. There are two strange things here: first, the fact that it looks like (and is) a piece of garbage would indicate that the quality of the contents is pretty ordinary. Second, and truly weird, is the incongruity of someone who cares enough about how they look to spend large dollars on handbags, shoes, clothes, jewelry, watches, cool phones, sunglasses, cars, ties, haircuts, cosmetics….is also willing to be seen walking around (and if they are a celebrity, photographed) carrying and drinking out of something as ugly, cheap, nasty, low rent and generally trashy as a plastic water bottle.




How does this disconnect happen? Do we all have an inability to see ourselves when we do this? Can you imagine a social convention that had all of us wear garbage bags over our Hugo Boss suits to protect them from the dust? Or making ourselves up perfectly for a formal evening and then using an old plastic shopping bag as a purse? It wouldn’t happen, yet the accessory of the noughties was the water bottle, and its most pervasive expression was the one made to throw away.







 For myself, I can’t imagine buying one of them, or carrying one. It has become such a symbol of the ugly consumer, the loud American or Australian who is completely unaware of where they are and what they are doing.  It is a symbol of something ugly that is also intrinsically ugly, and because I am, potentially, a living sculpture, I am going to match my wonderfully beautiful gear with something wonderfully beautiful – a refillable water bottle.












And then I am going to fill it with the ultimate in chic contents – Great Australian Tap Water.

I invite you to join me.



Tap water -  get something real into you

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