Duran 1
Cai Duran
Professor Sean Bernard
Intro to Prose Writing CWRT 204
16 May 2021
Money makes the world go round.
My Experience with Bottled Water
I pulled up to work around 10:30 just like I do every Saturday and Sunday morning. I
park in the same exact spot under a random tree that always seems to leave my car windshield
with speckles of dried sap on it, but of course it’s the only spot that is available. I then walk into
work, clock in, get my temperature taken, and make my way over to the magical isle 15; the isle
that holds all the store’s bottled water. Its the isle that needs to be restocked the most as a
majority of the people who come into our store, almost always have some type of bottled water
on their shopping list. I begin to take inventory on what needs to be stocked: the drinking water,
the purified water, the distilled water, the spring water, the alkaline water, and of course the most
popular, sparkling water. Not to mention, all these different types of water are all occupied by
three to four different brands, come in gallon sized, individual liter bottles, in bulk twenty-four to
thirty-five packs, and the sparkling water comes in a million different flavors as well. I just can’t
help but think how there came to be so many different types of water. An old man then walks
through the isle and starts quietly laughing to himself. He then says to me, “Man if I would’ve
invested my money into bottled water when I was your age, I’d be rich right now.” I think about
that statement a lot.
Duran 2
History of Bottled Water
Bottled water was first introduced to the American public in the early 1800s. It was
expensive and only drank by the rich at resort spas that had their own springs such as the Poland
Springs Resort in Maine. These resorts claimed that their water was obviously much more
cleaner and pure than regular urban water ways and even had claimed they had certain health
benefits like being a “kidney remedy.” Once bottling distribution grew cheaper in the late 1800s,
more Americans began to turn to bottled water allowing spring water companies like Arrowhead
to rise. However, as urban waterways began to be chlorinated, safe drinking water became
widely available causing bottled water sales to decline. However, by the 1970s a new health
craze began to hit America. Americans were no longer into buying sodas that had artificial
