THE UK population can be divided into two – those who do and those who don’t. I am determined to remain in the second group as I have never bought a bottle of water, and never will.

Indeed I can’t think of a more thoughtless, wasteful, self centred and greedy carbon dioxide producing example of general human behaviour than this one, though on second thoughts our hugely expensive national military forces must be the most extravagant and unnecessary way of abusing billions of pounds and each other.

The United States, for example, uses at least 50 billion plastic bottles of water each year and with a recycling rate of only 23 percent it means that close on 40 billion are waste. The UK consumes less with around three billion bottles annually, but the number is increasing all the time.

One of the most ludicrous facts is that we actually import water from specialist European companies and we really have to face up to the fact that a species that transports water in bottles, rather than pipes, is thoughtlessly committed to harming their descendants with uncontrolled climate change. We need to remember that water is heavy.

In most developed countries the normal tap water is completely safe to drink and the general population has been conned into thinking that bottled water is somehow superior when all the tests show that it isn’t. Indeed many folk can’t tell the difference.

It’s also a real rip off with the cost of a litre bottle being up to five hundred times more expensive than tap water. A litre of tap water in the UK costs only one tenth of a penny, whereas the bottled version averages around 65 pence.

Bottled water is a relatively recent development, a thoughtless habit, and I certainly didn’t feel the need to have a drink ready to hand in my younger days – we just didn’t walk around holding a container of liquid.

If you must have a drink available every minute of the day then just fill a glass bottle from the tap.