Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Worse, most Westernized peoples have come to think of bottled water as superior to water from the tap! Likely it's the opposite! However, this is due to ignorance, marketing hype and then fashion. Cheap plastic fakery cannot be blamed for that.Not having studied Konrad Lorenz's theories in depth, I wonder, couldn't it be freely interpreted as: When fantastic plastic is so abundantly present, it therefore becomes 'the norm' and represents a (lower) standard.
After all, most school kids think that milk is manufactured in a factory, just like Coca/Pepsi Cola ...
Bart
The bottles, however are another matter. They consume raw materials and fuel to move them. Their large needs divert resources. The plastic compounds leach out into the water and contaminate every cell in our flesh!
Bottled water is fine for emergencies, not for day to day living. The colored flavored versions, even spiked like Colas, rot kids' teeth and use up limited finances. Throughout the poorest communities in Africa I saw Colas and Fanta being widely accepted as part of the diet!
Still, cheap fake replica Apes and Bears may not blunt any perceptions of the creatures in the wild. That is an unsupported idea.
Asher
I worry more that the choice of plastics, how and where they are manufactured where they end up and their effect on our ecosystem.