Review of Tapped directed by Stephanie Soechtig and Jason Lindsey
Rating *****
First there was the book Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan which warned about the dangers of the industrialization of our food. Then there was the documentary Food, Inc., which covered many of the same topics. The meat we eat is contaminated with hormones. The animals are given food that are not a part of their natural diet. Most of the vegetables and fruits we eat are contaminated with pesticides and herbicides. What’s left? Surely there can’t be anything wrong with the water we drink, right? Well, you need to watch this movie to find out the answer.
This documentary is by the same people who did Who Killed The Electric Car. They know how to find interesting topics. It was released in 2009, but that shouldn’t stop you from seeing it.
I’ve heard the debate over tap water versus bottled water. I’ve read about the environmental damage caused by plastic bottles. And I’ve also heard warnings about the possibility of chemicals from the plastic bottles leaching into whatever liquid is in the bottle. This film brings all of those issues together in a fact filled, eye-opening, must watch documentary.
There are so many important issues to cover, there’s no way they can cover them all in depth. For all those tea party fans who want smaller government, you need to see this film. Government and regulation has a place. Regulating the water we drink should be a primary concern. The bottled water industry is an eight billion dollar industry. Guess how many people at the FDA oversee this industry? One hundred? Two hundred? How about one. And that is only a small part of her job. Your tap water is tested about a dozen times a day. The bottled water you drink isn’t tested at all. The FDA relies on studies performed by the bottled water industry to insure the safety of their product.
Then there is the enormous environmental damage caused by plastic bottles. They don’t bio degrade. They last forever. They end up in the oceans and ultimately in the fish we consume. What about recycling? Guess what. Most of the plastic bottles you spend all your time separating into recycling bins, they don’t get recycled. Why? Because it costs more to recycle than to just make new bottles. The bottles are made from an oil byproduct. Oil is then used to transport the bottled water to the consumer. Oil is used to refrigerate the water. If you want to do your part to save the planet, drink tap water and use a reusable water container.
The film covers many other equally disturbing issues like how the big water bottling companies like Nestle, Coke, and Pepsi pump thousands of gallons of fresh water from communities only to repackage the water and sell it back to the same communities for huge profits. The communities get nothing. Or how the pesticides and herbicides farmers use on the fields gets into the water tables and into our drinking water. The problem gets worse the further downstream you are, eventually that water makes it to the Gulf where there is a huge dead zone where nothing can survive due to a lack of oxygen.
The film uses a lot of statistics. One that caught my eye was that of all the water on this planet, only 3% is drinkable. I guess the next thing they’re going to tell us is that the air we breath is polluted. What? It is polluted. No wonder there are so many health problems today.