Video Reflection 2: The Story of Bottled Water

WOW! The Story of Bottled Water was truly one of the most inspiring video I've watched in a while, it completely changed my perception towards bottled water. Me, being brought up in Hong Kong, had always been taught that drinking straight from tap is no good. This is because Hong Kong's water are sourced from China in old and corroded pipes, which causes the water to have an unpleasant metallic taste, so filtering and boiling is needed to have "clean" water suitable for drink. I guess the bottled water industry seriously did a great job in marketing, for scaring us, consumers to believe in them that bottled water is actually worth to buy, making us think that tap water is not suitable to drink. Other than that, we humans (me anyways) are all super duper lazy, and love to think "if money cant solve it, then its not a problem". Therefore, even thou I have quite a few water bottles at home, I still can't be bothered to bottle up a bottle water to bring with me. As much as the guilt that I feel when I bring my bottle of mount franklin to the cashier, I still shamefully cant be bothered to bring my own water. But after this video, knowing all the plastic bottles will just be sent and buried in someone else's backyard (another shameful example of us using money to solve our own problem) and drinking bottled water is as bad as a pregnant woman smoking, I am definitly going to change my laziness, to help making an effort to make the world a better place!

Apart from the dramatic news that this video delivered me, I'm also very impressed by how marketing can make a huge difference in a product as well. I've always been wondering and complaining about why industrial design students need to do marketing subjects?! Now, I know... for a product or business to be success, marketing strategies take up a big and important role in the process too. To create a problem and to seduce customers. Even thou the marketers created the problem of "tap water is dirty to drink", cleverly, industrial designers took up this point and designed bottles to solve THE problem.

"Bobble" is a water bottle that comes with a colourful filter inside, it claims to take care both our bodies and the planet at the same time.