Today is World Water Day, an initiative born of the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. It's a day for those of us lucky enough to have access to clean drinking water to think about what we need to do to expand that access to the billions around the world who go without clean water or who have to endure long walks to get it.

 

A lot of my green bloggers friends are writing about World Water Day, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to share "The Story of Bottled Water", a great new video from Free Range Studios and Annie Leonard, the brains behind the Story of Stuff (and the more controversially received, at least by the green blogosphere, Story of Cap and Trade).

 

You have to hand it to the bottled water industry — they sure know how to market.

 

How else would you explain their success? They managed to convince a LOT of people that it's a good idea to pay 2,000 times more for their water because it comes in a plastic bottle. Bottled water costs more, tastes worse, and is actually less regulated than the water that comes out of your tap. It's nothing short of genius, in a kind of benignly evil sorta way.

 

Here's the video, it's a good one (via Jaymi Heimbuch at Treehugger).

 

 

My friend Adam Shake over at Twilight Earth has a great list of 8 ways to take action on Water Day.

 

Also on MNN: 5 cheap ways to save 1,000 gallons of water