瓶装饮用水产业--泛滥成灾
[font=Tahoma][b]转自ECOBBS[/b][/font][b][font=Tahoma]------------------------------[/font][/b]
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[font=Tahoma][b]Bottled-water industry
[/b][size=3][font=Tahoma][b]Waterlog
[/b]Jul 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition
[b]瓶装饮用水产业[/b]
[/font][/size][size=3][font=Tahoma][b]泛滥成灾
[/b]2008年7月17日
据《经济学人》印刷版
[/font][/size][/font][font=Tahoma]“SPARKLING or still?” The waiter’s question seems to offer a choice, but is in fact designed to deny it: tap water, after all, is never on the menu. According to Elizabeth Royte’s “Bottlemania”, in 2002 Nestlé produced a training manual aimed at waiters called “Pour on the Tips”. Converting guests to pricey bottled water, it said, could boost their monthly earnings by $100 or more. Some waiters even try to humiliate people who resist. “I get great pleasure out of making each of those ladies who are trying to impress their friends repeat the word ‘tap’ back to me,” wrote a server on “The Waiter’s Revenge”, an online message board.
“你要的水是带气的还是不带气的？”侍者这样问似乎是让你做出选择，而实际上，他是在否认你的选择。毕竟，自来水是绝不会出现在菜单上的。在Elizabeth Royte所著的《瓶装饮用水狂人》一书中，她写道：2002年雀巢公司印发了一份名为“小费滚滚来”的侍者训练手册。手册中声称劝说顾客消费昂贵的瓶装饮用水可以使他们（侍者）的月收入100美元以上。一些侍者甚至对那些拒绝消费饮用水的顾客进行羞辱。“有些女士总是想在朋友面前顾及面子，而我则让她们反复地说‘我要自来水’，这真让我开心。”一位服务员在一个名为“侍者的报复”的在线消息板上写道。
Snobbery, convenience and worries about tap water have propelled the American bottled-water industry from sales of $4 billion in 1997 to $10.8 billion in 2006. Globally the industry is now worth about $60 billion. As well as the plain variety, there are now bottled waters laced with all sorts of extra ingredients, such as caffeine, appetite suppressants, skin enhancers and even laxatives. Bottled-water giants such as Nestlé, the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo reckon that the market will continue to fizz. Last year Coca-Cola spent $4.1 billion to buy Glacéau, a firm that makes vitamin-enhanced water.
人们势利的态度，希望方便快捷和对自来水的担忧已促使美国瓶装饮用水的销售额从1997年的40亿美元升至2006年的108亿美元。从全球范围看，该产业规模现在已达到600亿美元。除了纯净水外，现在推出的饮用水中又含有各种其他成分，比如咖啡因、食欲抑制成分、润肤成分、甚至还有通便药物。饮用水巨头像雀巢、可口可乐、百事可乐等公司认为这一市场将继续充满活力。去年可口可乐公司斥资41亿美元收购了维他命水生产商Glacéau公司。
For bottled-water firms large and small it has been a marketing triumph. So confident are they that one executive promised a gathering of Wall Street analysts in 2000 that tap water would eventually be used only for showers and washing dishes. For those who enjoy conspiracy theory, public water fountains are mysteriously disappearing; renovated airports, for instance, emerge without their fountains—and a proliferation of drinks-vending machines.
对于大大小小的饮用水公司而言，这是在市场开拓中的一个胜利。各公司于是信心倍增。2000年，一家公司的主管人员甚至向一群华尔街的分析人士承诺，自来水将最终仅被用于淋浴和清洗餐具。在那些笃信阴谋论者看来，公共喷泉正在神秘的消失，机场经过翻修后，原来的喷泉不见了踪影，而饮料自动售货机则遍布角落。
[/font][size=3][font=Tahoma][b]Villain of the piece?
罪魁祸首？
[/b]It should be easy enough to pillory bottled water. It costs between 250 and 10,000 times more than tap water and in blind tastings people cannot usually separate the fancy beverage from the ordinary stuff. Then there is the environmental cost: according to one estimate, the total energy required to make and deliver each bottle of water is equivalent to [color=red][u]filling them a quarter of the way with oil[/u][/color]. While New Yorkers enjoy the services of water sommeliers, millions of people in developing countries lack access to any clean water at all.
要对瓶装饮用水提出批评并非难事。它比自来水的成本要高出250到10000倍。当蒙上眼睛来进行辨别时，人们通常无法将这种奇妙的饮品同大路货区分开来。此外，这还需付出一定的环境代价：根据一个估算，制造、运送每一瓶瓶装饮用水所需的总能量[u][b][color=red]相当于把它们装满1/4石油[/color][/b][/u]。在纽约人享受斟酒服务员的服务的同时，数以百万计记的发展中国家民众却缺乏卫生的水资源。
But although Ms Royte displays all the usual prejudices—private enterprise bad, collective provision good—her book concludes that even in rich countries tap water sometimes contains small quantities of harmful chemicals. She also points out that in water shortages, local authorities may supply people with water reclaimed from sewage without telling them. Bottled water, therefore, “has its place”: a confused message, if an honest one.
Nor do all bottled-water companies come out badly. In Fiji, half of whose inhabitants did not have access to clean water last year, the water-bottler plays an important part in the local economy: it pays well above the minimum wage, builds schools for workers’ children and puts money into a trust for local infrastructure.
但是，尽管Royte女士向我们呈现了全部的一般性偏见，即私有企业坏，集体供给好，然而她在书中得出这样的结论：即使是在富裕国家，自来水有时也会含有少量的有害化学物质。同时，她还指出，在水资源短缺时，地方政府可以向民众提供由废水经重新处理后的洁净水，并向他们不公布这一事实。因此，瓶装饮用水还是有“一席之地的”。这个信息虽然诚恳，却令人困惑。并非所有的饮用水公司都是惟利是图的。去年斐济有半数居民缺乏干净的生活用水。此时，饮用水公司在当地经济中发挥了至关重要的作用：它支付给员工的工资远高于当地的最低标准，出资为职工子女建造学校，向信托基金捐款以资助当地的基础设施建设。
Yet in the past few years a backlash against bottled water has gathered pace, with some upmarket restaurants deciding to offer only tap. Gisele Bundchen, a supermodel who has campaigned to conserve fresh water in Brazil, now sports a reusable metal water bottle. What waiter could complain about that?
然而在过去的几年中，对瓶装饮用水的集体抵制势头已逐渐增强。一些高级餐厅决定只向顾客提供自来水。巴西超模Gisele Bundchen发起了一项保护巴西新鲜水资源的运动并向大众展示一款可重复使用的金属饮用水瓶。餐厅的侍者又能有何怨言呢？[/font][/size]
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Book details[b]Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It[/b]
By Elizabeth Royte
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