Humor: Bottled water: I wish I had thought of that!

Bottled water: I wish I had thought of that!

I am not surprised that Australians are going through more aerated and bottled water these days. It is thirsty work watching the amount of sport we watch.

According to new figures, the average Australian drinks 113 litres of the bottle water a year - up four litres each in the past year.

We also watch a LOT of sport, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' 85th edition of its annual yearbook.
We have to. Our own involvement in organised sport apparently peaks at age 11 when we are asked politely to move to the perimeter and watch.
In 1999, 47 per cent of all Australians over 15 - seven million - attended a sporting event.
Many more of them, me included, stayed home and watched it on TV, guzzling bottle water and recalling with gusto our own gallant feats in the sporting arena at age nine.

I am not sure how the ABS gathers these figures.

Okay, Big Brother has the ability to work out our television habits (though no one has ever asked me mine). He can probably even can work out our sport-playing habits.

But drinking habits?
Surely only the number of bottles sold can be gleaned, not what is done with them.

The next time I rip the top off a bottle of water while watching the cricket on telly in the privacy of my lounge room, I will look to see if anyone is watching.

"Who are you?" I will say to the person with the clipboard standing where I suspect silly mid-off should be if I had a wide screen telly.

"Oh, don't mind me," he/she will say. "I'm from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. I am just here to check on your water consumption."

"Oh, cool," I will say, as I drain the contents of my water bottle down the nearest sink.

"Um, what are you doing?" the ABS person will say, mystified. "The regulations say you are supposed to be drinking it. If you don't our statistics will be all mucked up."

Is that so?

What if I don't like it? What if I only buy bottle water because it is trendy to do so? Why can't I put bottled water on my garden, or bathe in or put it down the drain in order to improve the quality of water in our sewers and water-tables?
Who thought of bottling water anyway? I bet they're rich now.
Each year I pay my local council many hundreds of dollars to pipe perfectly good water into my home. Until quite recently, I assumed, quite wrongly it seems, that it was fine for drinking as well as for washing my clothes, washing my dishes, and washing me.

The new ABS statistics have forced me to rethink this. I am now sure bottle water could help out in a variety of situations.

Which reminds me: The ABS yearbook reckons Australians drive their cars the equivalent of earth to Pluto and back 32 times - 180 billion kilometres - a year. Awesome.

Hmm, better pack some bottled water in the car, too, in case the radiator runs dry.

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it