after dinner sneeze

t says: A funny little thing I came across recently:

a box of water?

This half-liter of water comes in a cute white paper carton.  As you can tell from the design elements, it appears to be aimed at hipsters and clearly costs more than a bottle of Dasani or Poland Spring or BJ’s brand water.  Why’d I buy it?  I had to know: is boxed water better?  A few things struck me as odd upon further reading the label.  Apparently, the box is not made from recycled paper, rather, from paper that can be recycled … but plastic can be recycled too, right?  And it clearly says that “our boxes are recyclable only where facilities exist” … so I guess it means that I have to do some legwork before sticking this in the recycling bin (at least they gave me a website to look at: recyclecartons.com).  Furthermore, they boast that the trees they used to make this paper came from some kind of certified forest – I presume one in which trees are replaced as they are “harvested”?  Does that make it alright/better?  I have no idea.  Is there still net negative trees?  Maybe.  I did like the idea of being able to ship flattened boxes more effieciently – so that’s probably a legit environmental benefit.  BUT, there’s also a dirty little secret that isn’t obvious until you buy one of these: the inside of the box appears to be lined with some kind of metallic liner – so there’s probably additional materials and processing going on that further hurts any environmental claims (once again, what do I know about making paper cartons?).

But really – the big question is about taste: does it taste good?  Answer: nope.  It tastes like plastic … which is peculiar because it’s not from a bottle.  It reminds me of a Poland Spring that had spent all day baking in my beach bag at the shore on a 100+ degree day.  ‘Nuff said.

A high-cost source of water, that tastes not good, and of dubious environmental benefit.  Bummer.  I guess I should mention then the only real reason to buy this product: you look cool drinking water out of a paper carton.  Duh!