Tuesday 6/15

Save Water?

Have you seen the billboards and magazine ads about conserving water while doing yard work?  I’m talking about the ones that say:

“Sweep me, don’t drown me.”

                        ~Your Sidewalk

“I’m a lawn, not a pool.”

                        ~Your Yard

Sometimes, they’re even accompanied by a dramatically over-watered yard, like so:

Now, there’s actually a commercial telling you not to waste water in the yard or on the sidewalk, sponsored by the same people.  It shows a homeowner (an actor) spraying off his sidewalk and one of the sprinkler heads in his lawn is broken.  Then he steps over near his garden and his yard is flooded and muddy.  Yuck.

Here’s my question: wouldn’t they have had to waste a lot of water just to make that commercial?  It’s not like they caught a water-wasting despot on tape and used it.  No, it’s staged.  They wasted water in order to tell you not to waste water.  Hmm.  Print ads are cool, because you only have to kill trees for those, but then again, those aren’t telling us to conserve paper either. 

Come on, underpaid-water-conservation-advertising-company, don’t you know hypocrisy doesn’t sell?

By: S. Cole Garrett