I also read your diabtribe against bottled water in the New York Times. If I wanted to switch to tap water and give the money to a water charity, who would you recommend?
I give to Water Aid, but I’m sure there are many other charities that also support water projects. The thing about Water Aid, though, is that they concentrate on such projects exclusively. I originally thought about advocating a tax on bottled water, with the proceeds being used to fund water projects. The problem with this approach is that it’s very difficult to “ring fence” tax revenues in this way. Worse, it would then be up to the government in question to decide which water projects to support. Governments are hopeless at making such decisions: they attach unreasonable conditions, fund projects that favour domestic vested interests, and generally mess things up. After the Op-Ed appeared, I heard from Ethos Water, who sell bottled water and donate some of their profits to water projects — a sort of “fair trade” approach. (The company is now owned by Starbucks, where you can buy their water.) This is, I concede, better than a tax-based approach. But it does not address the unnecessa
