Drinking Water: Why Sustainability Is So Complicated

Drinking water reveals sustainability's complexity. Environmental scientist and water sommelier Dr. Elena Berg uses bottled water to show why environmental choices rarely divide neatly into good and bad. She traces how geology and mineral content create differences among waters, contrasts multinational bottlers with smaller single-source producers, and examines plastic waste, freshwater access, infrastructure, and environmental justice. The conversation also asks what sustainability means when every product carries an environmental cost and warns against treating it as a label or completed checklist. From tap water and water tasting to the stewardship practiced by some small water farmers, this episode offers an interdisciplinary environmental science case study in how context changes both the problem and the available response.

Episode Guest: Dr. Elena Berg

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Hosted by Clark Marchese

Audio Editing by Clark Marchese, Video Editing by Oscar Padula

Videography and Set Design by Le Studio Du Passage

Cover Art by Laurel Wong

Theme music by Nela Ruiz