lemon or cbd?

I know I'll get this wrong, but with Greta Thunberg sailing to America to make a point about carbon offset, I couldn't help notice this slice of millennial news.

It's the other side of Greta's debate, featuring a new way to ship plastic-bottled water to millennials. It's all about c-Business. Using SMS messaging, it's possible to order a supply of Dirty Lemon drinking water from a dealer, who will text a chatty reply to say it is on its way. Reminiscent of the approach used by a certain type of dealer around the skyscrapers of Manhattan?

Now this isn't any ordinary water. It's served up in a colourful 16 oz shampoo bottle (that's about a pint) and in a chilled package of 6 bottles at a time. All for the modest fee of USD65. That's £52.77.

The stylish resistor-coding rings around the bottle make it easy to identify the type of water being consumed. +Lemon? +Charcoal? +Aloe? +Turmeric? +Rose? There's a pretty wide choice. There's even +CBD, which contains an entirely legal cannabidiol extract.

So now the Millennial Influencers can sit around drinking it on their Instagram pages and Ker-Ching it's become a secret must-have fad.

Now, this where I don't get it. Conventional wisdom says that if you're out and want a chilled drink, then the Co-Op's chilled water is a great bet at 49p for 2 litres. Add a splash of lemon, from a fresh but wonky one, at 20p each and there's a delicious cooling drink, without the additives.

Or perhaps a recovery drink?

Well, chilled semi-skimmed milk comes as 2 pints for 89 pence.

See this 1958 advertisement, which isn't terribly different from the millennial selfies of today.

Drinka Pinta Milka Day, anyone?

Of course, in the olden days the woman had to be paid to pose for the publicity shot. Nowadays the influencers form an orderly line to receive their free goods in return for the selfies. I should know, with the number of intriguing offers (rejected) that even this modest blog receives.

But back to the product. It appears that another drinks supplier has shown an interest in Dirty Lemon and its marketing. It would be wrong to say that it had anything to do with the drug-dealing SMS model (even if their store in Tribeca is called The Drug Store). The makers of that once cocaine-enriched drink Coca-Cola decided last December to put $15m investment into Dirty Lemon's holding company, Iris Nova. They like the whole idea of impulse texting a purchase.

And it is so easy to smile, once you've enrolled for the Dirty Lemon subscription, it is possible to drop into the store, pick up a bottle and go, simply remembering to text the big lemon so that they can bill you.

1/Take What you Want. 2/Text what you want 3/Get on with life, as their store posters explain.

And if you can't pick them up in person, Dirty Lemon will ship the chilled shampoo bottles full of water free of charge to anywhere in the USA.

I think Greta may have her work cut out.