Bottled Water

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see nestle

college 8 wiki:

http://www.ic.ucsc.edu/college8core/c8wiki/index.php/Plastic

actually see solid waste

see plastic also bag ban

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ymail 2 24 corp acctability

we’re excited to announce a few victories in the water justice movement that have been years in the making. Last year Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland issued an order to phase out single-use plastics, like bottled water, in national parks by 2032. This will mean a significant reduction in plastic waste littering some of the wildest places in the U.S.

More recently, Governor Maura Healey issued an order that ensures the state of Massachusetts will no longer purchase single-use plastic bottles. And finally, the California State Water Board ordered the owner of Arrowhead brand bottled water (formerly owned by Nestlé) to drastically reduce its extraction of water from the San Bernardino National Forest. Read more about these movement victories on our blog.

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recycle puffery

https://theintercept.com/2022/04/26/plastic-recycling-bottled-water-poland-spring/

Maine Gov. Paul LePage

Around the world, private firms have been given “carte blanche rights to mine local groundwater supplies at the expense of local populations, say experts.” In 1997, Swiss food giant Nestlé signed a contract with the privately- owned water services provider in Fryeburg, Maine, to buy freshwater in bulk for its Poland Spring brand of bottled water. Fearing that large-scale commercial water exploitation would lead to groundwater depletion and the Saco River drying up, the town of Fryeburg enacted a Land Use Ordinance that required that any company pumping more than 10,000 gallons of water a day get approval from the planning board. With a constant stream of litigation and appeals, however, Fryeburg Water Co. was able to buy time while continuing its moneymaking sideline business without interruption.

Read the rest by Jonas Persson and Mary Bottari -- LePage Supports Pumping Public Water for Private Gain -- on PRWatch.

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https://www.ecowatch.com/bottled-water-ban-washington-2645192473.html

Bottled water manufacturers looking to capture cool, mountain water from Washington's Cascade Mountains may have to look elsewhere after the state senate passed a bill banning new water permits, as The Guardian reported.

The state, with its glacier-fed springs and rainforests, will become the first state in the country to put a total ban on new bottling operations looking to plunder the state's natural resources. The proposal is one of several in the works in Washington to protect local groundwater and to fend off the growing bottled-water industry, as the Tribune News Service reported.

The bill, once signed into law, will go into effect retroactively and apply to all new permits filed after Jan. 1, 2019, according to The Guardian.

"Washington State is carving the path towards a groundbreaking solution," said Mary Grant, the director of Food & Water Action's public water for all campaign, in a statement, as The Guardian reported. "This legislation … would ban one of the worst corporate water abuses – the extraction of local water supplies in plastic bottles shipped out of watersheds and around the country."

Across the country, local activists have warned that bottling companies are taking their water almost for free and then shipping it elsewhere, leaving local aquifers depleted.

"I was jolted to the core to realize the depth and breadth and magnitude of how they have lawyered up in these small towns to take advantage of water rights," said Washington state Sen. Reuven Carlyle, who sponsored the bill to ban bottling companies from extracting groundwater, as the Tribune News Service reported. "The fact that we have incredibly loose, if virtually nonexistent, policy guidelines around this is shocking and a categorical failure."

One of the jolting actions was revealed in leaked emails after Crystal Geyser planned to open a bottling plant near Mount Rainier. Locals feared that the company's plan to pump 400 gallons a minute from the site would lead to dry wells. In emails, Crystal Geyser mounted a legal campaign to sue the local subdivision opposing the plant and then it intended to conduct an underground public relations campaign to garner support for their proposal, as the Tribune News Service reported.

"Pumping water out of the ground, putting it in plastic bottles and exporting it out of the state of Washington is not in the public interest," said Craig Jasmer, a leader of the Lewis County Water Alliance, the group that sprung up to oppose the Randle plant and has pushed for the statewide ban, as the Tribune News Service reported.

Crystal Geyser has recently proven its disdain for public safety. Last month, the company pleaded guilty to storing toxin-laden wastewater in arsenic in eastern California, and then delivering the water to treatment plants without disclosing its hazard, as The Guardian rguk eported.

The Environmental Priorities Coalition, a network of groups including Americans Rivers, Audubon, and Sierra Club Washington State, advanced the legislation on its highest priorities list, saying it would stop "new water bottling plants from proliferating in Washington state, effecting small rural community water supplies necessary for both agriculture and threatened salmon species," as Common Dreams reported.

"Washington's waters belong to the people of Washington," said the Center for Environmental Law & Policy, according to Common Dreams. "There has been an increasing number of proposals to locate commercial water bottling plants in Washington. These plants would allow Washington's water to be taken for the benefit of corporations and users outside of the local area, perhaps out-of-state."

The Guardian noted that the tide is turning against bottle-water manufacturers, with bills also introduced in Michigan and Maine, and local measures introduced in Oregon and Montana.

bottled water water wastewater washington

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/lawmakers-open-groundwater-fight-against-bottled-water-companies/

Washington state, land of sprawling rainforests and glacier-fed rivers, might soon become the first in the nation to ban water bottling companies from tapping spring-fed sources.The proposal is one of several efforts at the state and local level to fend off the fast-growing bottled water industry and protect local groundwater. Local activists throughout the country say bottling companies are taking their water virtually for free, depleting springs and aquifers, then packaging it in plastic bottles and shipping it elsewhere for sale.“I was literally beyond shocked,” said Washi...

audio interview 12/19

1/3 US drink only bottled, 1/3 rarely drink tap thus bottle

newark NJ putting in PVC, not tested, plastic feedstock lobbyist pushing

https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-december-2-2019/

seth siegel What's Wrong w what we drink: troubled water book

On Tap: Seth Siegel's Masterful Examination of America's ...

https://www.ewg.org › news-and-analysis › 2019/11 › tap-seth-siegel-s-ma...

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:{Nov 1, 2019 - That's just the start of the story that Seth Siegel masterfully explores in his latest book, “Troubled Water: What's Wrong With What We Drink.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/06/liquid-assets-how--business-bottled-water-went-mad

story that’s far too common. Communities from Michigan to California have had to battle Nestlé's attempts to make massive profits by bottling the local water source. Even in the midst of droughts and wildfires.

But when a corporation threatens a community's right to water, SumOfUs members like you take action. Just last year, thousands of members like you helped the tiny township of Osceola, Michigan avoid bankruptcy by raising over $50,000 to fight off a lawsuit from Nestlé for trying to protect their water. That’s truly incredible.

That’s why the tiny town of Stanley, Australia is urgently asking for your help, Pat. This 400-person town is taking on a multi-billion dollar beverage company that’s been selling the town’s only source of fresh water.

The town is rapidly running out of money and needs your help to continue this fight until they can kick this greedy company out for good.

Chip in $1 now before this tiny town is forced into bankruptcy.

Stanley, Australia is a tiny town of just 400 people. Asahi-Schweppes is a massive soft drinks company has been bottling up Stanley’s only source of fresh water, selling it off, and making millions at the expense of the people who depend on it.

This small town has been fighting back -- but the court ordered them to pay almost $65,000 in legal costs to the other side. Now the townspeople are facing a terrible choice: give up or face bankruptcy.

This could either bankrupt the local post office and community center or force residents to empty their savings to pay the bill.

https://www.ecowatch.com/nestle-water-san-bernardino-2575958681.html

Settlement Ends Nestlé’s Expired 'Zombie' Permit to Siphon Water From San Bernardino National Forest

Federal officials and conservation groups reached an agreement Wednesday that will finally end Nestlé Corp.'s ability to rely on a permit that expired 30 years ago to siphon water from the San Bernardino National Forest for its massive bottled-water operation. The company's diversion has severely reduced water in spring-fed Strawberry Creek, which forest wildlife and plants need to survive.

This settlement of the 2015 lawsuit requires the U.S. Forest Service to decide in 30 days whether or not to issue a new permit for the pipeline and Nestlé's associated activities in the San Bernardino National Forest.The Center for Biological Diversity, Courage Campaign Institute and the Story of Stuff Project agreed to dismiss an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the old "zombie" permit after a new decision is issued. The groups reserved the right to challenge any new Forest Service decision.

Under the expired permit, Nestlé siphoned off as much as 162 million gallons of water a year from Strawberry Creek. Nestlé, the world's largest water-bottling company, earned $8.3 billion in profits from its water business in 2016. U.S. Geological Survey reports from July 2017 show that, despite heavy winter precipitation across California, Strawberry Creek's streamflow levels were the lowest since the agency began keeping track 96 years ago.

"This agreement stops Nestlé and the Forest Service from relying on a 30-year-old permit, but Strawberry Creek still desperately needs protection," said Ileene Anderson, a senior biologist at the Center for Biological Diversity. "The real tragedy is that Nestlé is sucking the creek dry to bottle water for profit, dooming plants and wildlife that have relied on it for tens of thousands of years. We'll keep fighting to protect Strawberry Creek and our forests from commercial exploitation."

The groups are urging the Forest Service to deny a new permit to Nestlé to safeguard the public land, water, plants and animals of the San Bernardino National Forest. If a new permit is issued, the agency should ensure there is enough water left in Strawberry Creek to support fish, wildlife and native plants year round.

The State Water Resources Control Board is also evaluating Nestlé's water rights on Strawberry Creek, which a board investigation determined is far less than the corporation claims.

...

osceloa mich sued by nestle b/c tried to limit 400 gal per minute extraction

Osceola Township’s fight to protect its water from Nestlé’s greed. Over and over again SumOfUs members answered the call to support this tiny township in its David and Goliath battle with Nestlé.

When a judge ruled in favour of Nestlé, Osceola Township decided to appeal and continue to protect its water. And thanks to caring members like you, we were able to give them another $20,000 USD to fund the appeal. This makes a massive $50,000 total that we were able to give to this township to allow them fight Nestlé to protect their water.

The people of Osceola Township are everyday heroes. Without their hard work and dedication, Nestlé would be sucking Michigan dry. We want to say a huge thank you to the people on the ground, doing the incredible work of fighting Nestlé.

Coca-Cola Produced More Than 110 Billion Plastic Bottles Last Year10/17.

Coca-Cola Produced More Than 110 Billion Plastic Bottles Last Year

By Andrew McMaster

Every second, more than 20,000 drinks in plastic bottles are purchased around the globe.

That adds up to more than 1 million bottles a minute and nearly 500 billion bottles per year.

It may come as no surprise then that the largest beverage manufacturer, Coca-Cola, reportedly manufactured more than 110 billion plastic bottles in 2016.

The environmental activist group Greenpeace claims that this number has risen by about 1 billion bottles since last year, despite Coca-Cola's public campaign to reduce the amount of plastic it uses.

"We have calculated [Coca-Cola] produced over 110 billion throwaway plastic bottles every year—an astounding 3,400 a second," Louise Edge, oceans campaigner for Greenpeace, told the Guardian.

Greenpeace has been campaigning for Coke to stop polluting oceans with plastic bottles over the last few months. The organization reports that plastic bottles are one of the most commonly found items on beaches across the world, bringing a litany of environmental hazards with them wherever they pop up.

"Once [plastic bottles] are in the environment, they become a hazard for wildlife," wrote Tisha Brown, a campaigner for Greenpeace's ocean team. "Larger pieces of plastic can become an entanglement or choking hazard for animals. These larger plastics break down over time into microplastics which have been found in everything from seafood, sea salt and even our drinking water."

...

bot water = disaster capitalism?!

https://www.alternet.org/water/nestle-pays-200-year-bottle-water-near-flint-where-water-undrinkable

guard UK link?

Nestlé Pays $200 a Year to Bottle Water Near Flint—Where Water Is Undrinkable

While Flint battles a water crisis, just two hours away the beverage giant pumps almost 100,000 times what an average Michigan resident uses into plastic bottles.

Luster bathed her child in lukewarm bottled water, emptied bottle by bottle into the tub, for months. It became a game for her seven-year-old daughter. Pop the top off a bottle, and pour it into the tub. It takes about 30 minutes for a child to fill a tub this way. Pop the top, pour it in; pop the top, pour it in. Maybe less if you can get gallon jugs.

Luster lives in Flint, Michigan, and here, residents believe tap water is good for one thing: to flush the toilet.

“I don’t even water my plants with it,” she said.

Flint became synonymous with lead-poisoned water after government officials, looking to save money, switched the city’s water supply from Detroit city water to water from the corrosive Flint river.

Once the city had switched, the number of children with elevated lead exposure doubled; residents reported unexplained rashes and losing hair. An unpublished study recently found fetal deaths in Flint increased by 58% during the crisis.

Suddenly, Flint was a cause célèbre. The Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders held a debate in Flint. Barack Obama visited to raise morale. Americans who could afford it started ripping out old lead pipes. Media outlets across the country started examining their own towns for lead.

Despite having endured lead-laden tap water for years, Flint pays some of the highest water rates in the US. Several residents cited bills upwards of $200 per month for tap water they refuse to touch.

But just two hours away, in the tiny town of Evart, creeks lined by wildflowers run with clear water. The town is so small, the fairground, McDonald’s, high school and church are all within a block. But in a town of only 1,503 people, there are a dozen wells pumping water from the underground aquifer. This is where the beverage giant Nestlé pumps almost 100,000 times what an average Michigan resident uses into plastic bottles that are sold all over the midwest for around $1.

To use this natural resource, Nestlé pays $200 per year.

Now, Nestlé wants more Michigan water. In a recent permit application, the company asked to pump 210m gallons per year from Evart, a 60% increase, and for no more than it pays today. In the coming months, the state is set to decide whether Nestlé can to pump even more.

The proximity of the Nestlé plant to Flint’s degraded public water supply has some Michigan residents asking: why do we get undrinkable, unaffordable tap water, when the world’s largest food and beverage company, Nestlé, bottles the state’s most precious resource for next to nothing?

Nestlé and Coca-Cola Attempt to Block National Parks From Banning Bottled Water Sales11/16.

Nestlé Can Keep Piping Water Out of Drought-Stricken California Despite Permit Expiring in 1988 9/16

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California’s Drought Policy Serves Corporations First, People Second

California is suffering a historic drought with no relief in sight. According to the latest report from NASA, California has less than a year’s supply of surface water left. In an executive order, Governor Jerry Brown, a self-proclaimed climate leader, imposed a 25% reduction on the state’s local water supply agencies, which serve 90% of California’s residents. Everyday citizens are being asked to cut down on shower times and lawn watering. While these are worthy efforts, they are mere drops in the bucket considering that residential and municipal use of water in CA account for less than 20% of water consumption. Instead of getting at the root of the problem and targeting water-guzzling agribusiness and the oil and gas industry, Governor Brown’s climate policy is pro-corporate, irresponsible and unsustainable.

Despite the growing water crisis, there are no provisions in Brown’s water reduction plan to halt fracking, an extreme method of oil and gas extraction requiring high-pressure injection of millions of gallons of chemical-laced water and sand into deep rock setting free oil or natural gas unavailable through conventional drilling. Last year fracking production in the state used 70 million gallons of water,1 the equivalent of 514 households annually.2 Although proponents of fracking may claim that the combined water use of 514 households is not that high, water used in fracking is highly contaminated and not returned to the annual water cycle, unlike household wastewater.

It was recently learned that California officials allowed oil and gas companies to dump this contaminated water into federally protected aquifers that could have been used for drinking and irrigation purposes.3 Illustrating the corporate control of regulatory agencies, 46 percent of the state permits authorizing these practices were granted in the last four years, the same four years during which the EPA warned California regulators they were not doing enough to protect underground water reserves.

In the Central Valley, many Latina/o farmworkers are struggling for their livelihoods due to years of drought. As a result of last year’s extreme weather, 17,000 farmworker jobs and 400,000 acres of farmland were lost.4 Other Californians are living entirely without running water. In East Porterville, for example, people are turning to costly and environmentally destructive bottled water to meet household needs.5

We can also look at Nestle Corporation’s privatization of our water to further understand how corporate rule is impacting every Californian. In Sacramento, tens of millions of gallons of Sacramento municipal water are being withdrawn by a local Nestle plant. Nestle uses and bottles thousands of acre-feet of California water. An acre-foot, roughly speaking, equals 326,000 gallons, enough to supply a family’s yearly needs.

Nestle and other bottling companies buy water at a pittance and sell it back to the public at exorbitantly high rates. As California’s water disappears, the investment portfolios of some of the nation’s most profitable corporations are being flooded.

In a recent interview Nestle CEO Tim Brown was asked if halting waster extraction was in the company’s plans. Brown responded: “Absolutely not. In fact, if I could increase it, I would. …If I stop bottling water tomorrow, people would buy another brand of bottled water. ...It’s driven by consumer demand, it’s driven by an on-the-go society that needs to hydrate.” 6

Is it possible that CEO Brown never heard of a reusable drinking water bottle?

Out of this Nestle Corporation debacle, the “Crunch Nestle Alliance” formed. The group has singled out Sacramento City Hall, saying Nestle’s privatization was made possible through a “corporate welfare giveaway.” Nestle pays Sacramento $186.00 per 215,000 gallons of water taken from the area aquifers. Those 215,000 gallons bring the Nestle Corporation a whopping $2.1 million in profit.7 The Crunch Nestle Alliance has successfully blockaded a Sacramento Nestle plant several times, raising awareness that water is a human right not a commodity to sell on the open markets.

Notes

1 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/03/us-california-drought-fracking-exclusive-idUSKBN0MU01M20150403

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/02/fracking-california-water_n_6997324.html

2 http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/04/06/3643184/california-70-million-gallons-fracking/

3 http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/02/05/ap-oil-drilling-waste-dumped-into-calif-aquifers-used-for-irrigation-drinking-water/

4 http://fusion.net/story/114463/as-california-goes-dry-latinos-suffer-disproportionately/

5 http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/20/east-porterville-california-drought-bottled-water-showers-toilets

6 "Starbucks Moves Ethos Water from California after Drought-shaming" The Washington Post, May 12, 2015

7 https://criticl.me/post/crunchnestle-alliance-1179

http://www.alternet.org/environment/big-water-vs-national-parks-fight-against-bottled-water-goes-federal

nice overview

mid-December, Congress passed a provision within a $1.8 trillion budget bill requiring the National Park Service to file a report justifying a ban on selling bottled water at a number of parks around the country. Meanwhile, the bottled water industry promoted a rider in the appropriations bill prohibiting use of federal funds to support banning bottled water in national parks. So far, over 20 parks have gone bottled-water-free, including the Grand Canyon, Canyonlands, Zion and Bryce Canyon, and Fort Sumter National Monument. This is another development in the ongoing fight between the National Park Service and Big Water over banning bottled water.

Earlier this December, more than 30 members of Congress signed a letter to National Park Service director Jonathan Jarvis opposing Big Water's effort to sabotage the bottled water ban. "As Members of Congress concerned with the preservation of our National Parks," the letter read, "we support the National Park Service in increasing the availability of public water and adopting bottled water free policies on National Park premises."

Several big-name corporations bottle water: Nestlé owns Arrowhead, Pepsi bottles Aquafina, and Coca-Cola bottles Dasani.

The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), a trade association of bottled water companies, then released a statement commending Congress for requiring the National Park Service "to provide the facts about how it justifies banning the sale of bottled water in America's national parks." The group also claimed, "In addition to being the healthiest package beverage consumers can choose, bottled water has the smallest environmental footprint of any package beverage."

This past July, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, entitled "The Unintended Consequences of Changes in Beverage Options and the Removal of Bottled Water on a University Campus," looked at the impact of a bottled water ban at the University of Vermont. The study concludes that "[t]he bottled water ban did not reduce the number of bottles entering the waste stream from the university campus, the ultimate goal of the ban. With the removal of bottled water, consumers increased their consumption of less healthy bottled beverages." Big Water - and even the right-wing college newspaper The College Fix - pounced on the study to confirm its position against bottled water bans. The IBWA said the study "has confirmed the International Bottled Water Association's (IBWA) position that efforts to ban or restrict the sale of bottled can lead to increased consumption of less healthy beverages and plastic waste."

However, Corporate Accountability International, a nonprofit organization focused on challenging corporate abuse, argued that the "design of the study was too limited to draw real conclusions about any consequences - unintended or not - of the bottled-water-free policy at UVM." On top of that, they point out that the study's authors make causal claims that are not backed up by the study. There are correlations, such as the increase in students consuming sugary beverages after the bottled water ban. But the study's data does not provide enough information to prove that the ban led to students buying more sugary beverages. In addition, UVM had a 30 percent healthy beverage ratio policy - all campus locations selling bottled beverages needed to provide at least 30 percent "healthy" beverages - which was enacted in August 2012: five months prior to the bottled water ban implemented in January 2013. Corporate Accountability International pointed out that the study's authors "provide no explanation or interpretation of the fact that there was an increase in sugary beverage consumption after that policy was enacted - before the bottled-water-free policy was put into place."

There is another reason to question the authors' and Big Water's argument that banning bottled water leads to increased consumption of sugary, unhealthy bottled beverages: Such an argument presumes that those are the only two choices that exist. If a school bans bottled water but does not install more water fountains to compensate, and continues to sell sugary beverages, then it seems probable that people will drink more Pepsi, Coke and similar beverages. It is less about the ban but more about the choices presented. In a national park, it is rare to see vending machines selling Pepsi, Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew along a trail. It would not make any sense, especially since such drinks lead to more, rather than less, dehydration. So, in that situation, banning bottled water would likely not lead to an increase in consumption of sugary beverages.

Lauren DeRusha, senior national campaign organizer with Corporate Accountability International, told Truthout that parks that go bottled-water-free "are increasing access to tap water. So any place where there used to be access to bottled water, now there's access to tap water." Parks also undergo a long feasibility process before they ban bottled water.

"If you think about [it], you're going hiking, in the Grand Canyon. Are you going to take a liter of Coca-Cola with you in your pack to stay hydrated on the trail?" DeRusha asked. "No. You need to have access to water." As a result, more people visiting parks that ban bottled water are bringing their own bottles and filling them at the designated water stations. That trend has played out in other places where bottled water has been banned, as well. "What we're actually doing, when institutions go bottled-water-free - it's always, always coupled with increasing access to tap water," DeRusha said. Thus, the framing of bottled water versus sugary beverages is a false choice.

Several parks have gone bottled-water-free largely because of the waste that bottled water produces. For example, Grand Canyon National Park banned the sale of bottled water in 2012, and then installed designated water refilling stations. The park claimed - before the ban was instated - that "disposable plastic water bottles comprise an estimated 20% of Grand Canyon's waste stream and 30% of the park's recyclables."

Plastic water bottles have serious environmental impacts. Shawn Norton, National Park Service branch chief of sustainable operations and climate change, explained, "Americans discard approximately 50 billion plastic water bottles each year. Producing that number of water bottles consumes approximately 20 billion barrels of oil and generates more than 25 million tons of greenhouse gases." Plastic bags and bottles are the most common form of pollution in oceans and on beaches. On average, each square mile of ocean is littered with over 46,000 pieces of plastic. Of the nearly 100 million tons of plastic produced every year, 10 million tons end up in the ocean - the majority (80 percent) coming from land. Most plastic bottles are not recycled. Over 80 percent of plastic water bottles end up in landfills every year. Plastic water bottles are not biodegradable. Instead, they photodegrade, meaning they break up into tiny fragments over time, sometimes taking a year or more. This kind of decomposition requires exposure to sunlight, which is very rare for plastic bottles in landfills.

DeRusha explained that Big Water has been waging a long campaign to make the public distrust tap water in order to sell bottled water. She said Big Water has spent "millions of dollars in misleading marketing to make us distrust our public water infrastructure. And they've also undermined the political will to invest in our infrastructure."

Because many in the public are told - and believe - that tap water is bad, people are more willing to buy bottled water under the impression that it's cleaner and safer, thereby giving more money and power to the bottled water industry. This also gives a private industry greater control over a public resource. As a result, DeRusha said, "We are not as focused as we need to be, as a country, on reinvesting in our public water infrastructure so that we can always rely on having clean, safe tap water."...

How Much Would You Pay for Air? It Sounds Absurd At First— But They Already Got You to Pay for Water

Is the bottled water industry a harbinger of crazier industries to come?

By Anna Bernasek and D. T. Mongan / Perseus Books October 28, 2015

The following is an excerpt from the new book All You Can Pay: How Companies Use Our Data to Empty Our Wallets by Anna Bernasek and D. T. Mongan (Nation Books, 2015):

How much would you pay for air? It’s an absurd question. After all, air is free. There’s no reason to pay for it. Air seems a poor choice for a commercial product. But what if you were in a place with limited air—the top of a mountain, underwater, or in a sealed room? In those places, you’d pay a lot for air, maybe even everything you have.

If not air, then how about water? For a moment water seems absurd too. It’s available nearly everywhere, and it’s so cheap it’s often given away for free. But if you’re thirsty and you’re out of options, you’ll pay plenty for water. Both air and water are so important that after a short time—minutes in the case of air, a few days in the case of water—humans can’t live without them. We derive an immense bene?t from those plentiful commodities and yet we generally pay very little for them.

The di?erence between how much you would pay for something if you had to and how much you actually pay in the current market is called economic surplus. The story of business, from the very ?rst barter trade right through to the latest ?nancial transaction a millisecond ago, is a story of economic surplus. People and businesses buy or sell goods and services because what they get—whether it’s air or a car or a dollar—is worth more to them than what they give in exchange. The di?erence between what something is worth to you and what you actually give in exchange for it can be very personal. Surplus varies from person to person, from time to time, and from situation to situation.

The surplus captured by consumers is known as the consumer surplus, and the pro?ts from businesses are known as the producer surplus. The total economic surplus is the sum of both the consumer surplus and the producer surplus. The surplus is always up for grabs as consumers try to pay less, get more, and maximize enjoyment while businesses try to charge more, deliver less, and minimize cost.

Take water, for example. In most parts of the world, clean water occurs naturally. Sometimes minor ?ltration or chemical adjustment is necessary, but unless you’re in a spaceship, nobody makes water. Yet despite the fact that water is available from taps throughout the United States for next to nothing, today there exists a $13 billion bottled-water industry that sells water to consumers. Bottled-water companies don’t create water; it comes from nature. At the source it could contain a few minerals, maybe even some ?zz. Sometimes it’s just the same as regular tap water but in a bottle. What the companies have ?gured out, though, is that people drink water all the time, and it’s very important to them. So the bottled-water industry actually sells packaging. Thirsty Americans could easily ?nd a tap nearby if they went to a little trouble, but they’ll pay for a bottle from the newsstand at the corner if it’s just a bit easier to get. So nearly everywhere, water is sold in convenient resealable bottles. When you think about it, that’s all there is to bottled water: a little bit of convenience. And throughout the global beverage market, bottled water is by far the fastest-growing product. Some people—typically those with fewer means or more time—will still seek out taps and drinking fountains, but many others will willingly pay a few dollars for a cup or two of water in a bottle.

The total surplus that could be captured from selling water is probably in?nite because nobody can survive for long without it. However, so far nobody has monopolized the product. It’s a commodity and it sells into a mass market. Today there are many di?erent brands of bottled water. The creation of the bottled-water industry shows how businesses have ?gured out ways to charge for something that previously was considered a public good and provided to all at no cost. In e?ect, bottled-water companies have nibbled away at the consumer surplus by enticing consumers to pay for what they once got for free.

Bringing Water to the Mississippi

The large bottled-water market didn’t happen overnight. It began almost half a century ago in New York City when an American marketing genius and a savvy French businessman teamed up to launch America’s ?rst successful bottled water. A forty-year-old ambitious marketing executive, Bruce Nevins was on the lookout for the next big thing when he met Gustave Leven. At the outset Nevins was skeptical. Bottled water? From France? It seemed fanciful to get Americans to pay for something that was already piped into their homes.

Deep down, however, Nevins sensed an opportunity. Next to air, water represented the ultimate commodity: cheap, universal, and essential for life. It had inherent value, value without limit. At certain times people would be willing to pay almost anything for it. The trick was how to capture even just a little bit of that value. A small fraction of the value consumers derived from water would add up to a fortune. It was the mid-1970s, and Nevins had just left Levi Strauss at the top of its game. Every young person around the world, from Moscow to Manila, wanted a pair of Levi’s, in part due to Nevins’s international marketing e?orts. But Nevins possessed an entrepreneurial streak and left it all behind to strike out anew, founding Pony Sporting Goods with a former colleague from Levi Strauss. Through friends, acquaintances, and friends of friends, the pair scrambled to ?nd a group of investors to back the company. One investor, Gustave Leven, was chairman of the board of the French water company Perrier and the man who single-handedly turned a long-forgotten mineral water into one of France’s premier brands.

Leven warmed to Nevins immediately. It was Nevins’s sense of openness to ideas that initially attracted Leven. The Frenchman was looking for an ally, someone who believed in Perrier as much as he did, and he thought he could convince Nevins to do what many considered impossible at the time: change American habits. Leven believed he could sell bottled water that was distinctly French and foreign to a population accustomed to drinking good old American-made soft drinks like Coke and 7UP.

Leven was as passionate as ever about sparkling water. He had come across Perrier as a young stockbroker right after World War II. After visiting the natural springs where Perrier is sourced in Vergéze in Southern France for a client, he decided to buy the company himself. Perrier boasted a decorated history. A local doctor named Louis Perrier bought the springs in 1898 and operated a spa, o?ering bottled water for sale. A few years later St. John Harmsworth, a wealthy Englishman, bought the springs and sold Perrier throughout the British Empire. It was served at Buckingham Palace and became popular with the royal family, making it an instant hit in Britain and earning Perrier a reputation as the “champagne” of waters. But once Harmsworth died and the war started, Perrier languished. Losing its main market and without capital investments, Perrier struggled to produce and sell bottled water. For fourteen years Perrier remained largely abandoned until Leven ?rst visited its springs in the late 1940s. Leven saw an opportunity to resurrect Perrier and seized it. Perrier had been better known in Britain and the colonies than in France, but under Leven, Perrier became France’s leading sparkling water. After three decades of growth, Leven believed Perrier was ready for something bigger and bolder, and he turned his sights on launching the bottled water in the huge U.S. market. But ?rst, he needed someone who really knew the ropes.

Leven had been after Nevins for months to take a look at his proposal. But Nevins dragged his feet. McKinsey, the world’s leading management consultant, had just done a detailed study about Perrier’s prospects in the United States and concluded it wasn’t a viable proposition. That seemed to make Leven even more determined, but it only discouraged Nevins. What could Nevins possibly ?nd that McKinsey hadn’t?

Nevins ?nally agreed to do some research. Perrier was already sold in high-end restaurants in Manhattan and Los Angeles but otherwise, at that point, the pear-shaped green bottles were largely ignored, collecting dust on American shelves. Nevins began by conducting focus groups, searching for insights into how to get consumers to buy water. After the ?rst one or two, he became intrigued. There was something there after all, and he could sense a purpose for the product.

In the 1970s a growing health awareness among Americans increasingly drew many to diet drinks. But diet drinks used saccharine, which was believed to be carcinogenic, and that scared a lot of people o?. That’s when Nevins realized Perrier wasn’t in the bottled-water business after all—it was a mistake to think about Perrier in that way. Perrier was actually in the alternative-beverage business, a healthy alternative to everything else out there: soft drinks, diet drinks, and alcohol. What could be not only as healthy to drink as water but also a real pleasure to drink? The bubbles made Perrier seem luxurious without any guilt. Distinctive packaging made it both convenient and unique.

Leven, thrilled that Nevins had become excited about Perrier’s American prospects, made Nevins the head of Perrier in the United States. Perrier was o?cially launched in 1977, ?rst in New York City and then in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Florida, Chicago, and eventually the rest of the country. Nevins coordinated the launch with a splashy ad campaign featuring one of the nation’s best-known and most-celebrated stars of the day, Orson Welles. Welles became the face, or rather the voice, of Perrier. At around 350 pounds, Welles remained o? camera, narrating the commercial. “Pure Perrier,” Welles said in his distinctive voice, “enjoy it in good health. Naturally sparkling water from the center of the earth.”

Marathon sponsorships accompanied Perrier’s ad campaign. By the late 1970s, thousands of people ran the New York City marathon wearing Perrier T-shirts. At the same time, Nevins worked on the press. He ?ew a group of American journalists to France to see Perrier for themselves. First in Paris, then at the natural springs where Perrier is sourced, the journalists were treated to the best of everything. But Nevins also worked on making the bottled water a?ordable. His vision of Perrier did not include champagne prices. He wanted to make Perrier an approachable product for most Americans, so he negotiated shipping prices down, to o?er a lower retail price, and sold Perrier in supermarkets around the country.

Perrier became a huge success and has been hailed as one of the great marketing triumphs of the twentieth century. In the ?rst three years, sales of Perrier increased more than 3,000 percent and kept on climbing. By 1988 Americans were buying 300 million bottles of Perrier a year and the company had captured 80 percent of the market. Looking back on it now, Nevins, in his eighties, admits Perrier represented the pinnacle of his career.

So what had Nevins really done? He took springwater, packaged it, shipped it halfway around the world, and convinced many American consumers that water is worth paying for. Imagine selling water to people living on the banks of the Mississippi or the shores of the Great Lakes. Nevins was selling French water very pro?tably in a country blessed with plentiful water resources of its own. What’s more, selling water ?ew in the face of a long-standing American civic tradition of providing water to everyone for free, or nearly free.

In the process, Nevins captured a piece of the surplus formerly owned by consumers. With his marketing genius, Nevins took over the high end of the market for water: consumers who were willing to pay to get something more than they got from tap water. Formerly, all those Perrier customers drank ordinary water, and the cost of Perrier stayed in their wallets. By communicating his vision of Perrier as an a?ordable luxury, Nevins captured a part of the greatest prize in business: a portion of the consumer surplus, a sliver of the value consumers derive from water.

A Bottled-Water Industry

With the success of a single product, Nevins touched o? an explosion in the beverage industry, paving the way for others to follow. And many brands have followed with great success. Since Perrier ?rst launched, the bottled-water industry has never looked back. After soft drinks and alcohol, bottled water now comprises the third-biggest category of beverages consumed in the United States by number of gallons. It accounted for 17 percent of all beverages consumed in the United States in 2012, ahead of co?ee at 15 percent and just behind alcoholic drinks, which had 19 percent of the market.

It’s amazing how fast the bottled-water industry has grown. Although soft drinks still make up 27 percent of the entire beverage market, bottled water is catching up. In the past decade, the consumption of bottled water in the United States grew steadily while the consumption of soda fell. Per capita consumption of bottled water increased 50 percent from 2002 to 2012, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, while the consumption of soda has declined slightly. Still, Americans overall consume more soda than bottled water: about 30.8 gallons of water versus 47 gallons of soda in a year. But if the trend of increasing bottled-water consumption continues, it won’t be long before bottled water outsells soda nationwide. Those in the bottled-water business predict that day may come sooner rather than later. Tim Brown, president and CEO of Nestlé Waters North America, contends that by 2017 Americans will be drinking more bottled water than soft drinks. And he expects that trend to follow all around the world.

It’s already happening in the biggest regional market in the United States: the New York metro area, a region of more than 20 million people spanning New York state, Connecticut, and New Jersey. Without a secret formula or a glitzy ad campaign, a single brand of water, Poland Spring, outsells Coke and Pepsi by a huge margin. In 2013, in the New York metro area, sales of all varieties of Coca-Cola added up to $374 million. In comparison, sales of Poland Spring in the same area totaled $507 million. Poland Spring is the only major beverage brand that increased its 2013 sales in the New York metro area. Sales of both Coke and Pepsi declined. Other markets around the country show signs of following. Bottled water outsells soda in supermarkets in ?fteen other major U.S. cities, according to the Nielsen Company. That includes Las Vegas, Boston, Dallas, Phoenix, and Houston.

Nevins could never have guessed how big the bottled-water market would eventually become. In fact, it was Nevins who bought Poland Spring for Perrier in the late 1980s. And he admits today that he is as surprised as anyone by America’s thirst for bottled water. “We had hoped the US market would catch up to Europe but we never expected it to be a $13 billion business,” he says.

So why do Americans buy bottled water when they can drink water virtually for free from the tap? In Perrier’s case, the bubbles and the story of its source in France made it unique and enticing. But Perrier itself isn’t a premium product—it comes out of the ground for next to nothing. Rainwater and carbon dioxide are naturally forced up through limestone, creating bubbling water, an e?ect that gave Perrier’s source the name les bouillens, “boiling waters” in French. In an unadvertised twist, the water and the gas are actually collected separately and then combined back at a bottling plant to provide consistent carbonation. Perrier contains a few naturally occurring minerals: a bit of calcium, potassium, and magnesium as well as about half a dozen or more other minerals in trace amounts. But in essence it’s a very simple product. Leven, the French founder of modern-day Perrier, took a low-cost product and marketed it as a luxury. Then Nevins sold that image to Americans. In e?ect, Leven and Nevins gave consumers who would willingly pay more for water a reason to do so. Still, or “?at” water as it is also called, is somewhat di?erent, with no bubbles or frills to separate it from what comes out of the tap. Yet today, still water outsells sparkling water around the country. Two of the leading still-water brands in the United States, Dasani and Aqua?na, are essentially sourced from the public system. There’s virtually nothing unique about the waters themselves.

Pepsi ?rst launched Aqua?na back in 1994, and it was so successful that Coca-Cola followed with Dasani just ?ve years later. Both products are sold as puri?ed water. In Dasani’s case, Coca-Cola bottling plants around the country collect the water from the most convenient local water source near each plant. Usually, that means connecting to the nearest town’s water or, if there isn’t running water, using well water. Coca-Cola then ?lters the water and adds in small quantities of mineral salts for uniform taste. Coca-Cola essentially buys Dasani water from the local source at a very low price, bottles it, and then sells it for a substantial pro?t.

It’s interesting to note that although Americans have no problem buying tap water from Coca-Cola, the same can’t be said for Europeans, at least not so far. Dasani’s launch in the United Kingdom in 2004 was a disaster. Simply put, the British wouldn’t buy Coca-Cola’s water. Dasani torpedoed the launch when Fleet Street tabloids ran headlines like “The Real Sting” and “Coke sells tap water for 95p.” But mineral contamination that ended up in some of the bottled water is what sealed Dasani’s fate in the United Kingdom. Coca-Cola pulled Dasani in the United Kingdom and shelved plans to expand into Europe.

In the United States, some consumers buy Dasani and Aqua?na in part due to inchoate fears that tap water and communal taps or fountains are unsafe. Overwhelming evidence points to the contrary, but local water departments don’t spend big money marketing their product. Convenience is perhaps an even more important feature of bottled water, though. Coca-Cola isn’t selling Americans water; it’s really selling Americans a little bit of packaging and ease. In essence, Coca-Cola sells the value of your time—the time it would take to get a bottle, ?nd a tap, and ?ll it your

http://www.salon.com/:{2015/:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:03/14/bottled_water_is_a_scam_pepsico_coca_cola_and_the_beverage_industrys_greatest_con_partner/

ollowing is the latest in a new series of articles on AlterNet called Fear in America that launched this March. Read the introduction to the series.

The biggest con job perpetrated on the consumer is not some shady operation selling bogus cures through TV infomercials. America’s biggest snake-oil salesman is actually the beverage industry, or Big Bev, which resells the simplest and most vital product for thousands of times its value. That product is drinking water.

Multinationals like PepsiCo, the Coca-Cola Company and Nestle rake in a combined $110 billion a year selling bottled water worldwide. In the U.S. alone, more than half the population drinks bottled water, which accounts for about 30% of liquid refreshment sales, far exceeding the sales of milk and beer (only soft drinks sell more).

But the expensive water the beverage industry sells is no better — and possibly worse — than the water you get from your tap (and often, the water they sell is tap water). So how did these companies fool the public into paying a few bucks for something that costs a few pennies per gallon from a faucet?

Fear. These multinationals have spent millions on marketing to convince consumers that tap water tastes bad, contains high levels of contaminants and poses a danger to human health. Municipal water, they claim, is a scourge, and the only way you get drink healthy water is to buy it through private beverage companies, at up to 2,000 times the cost of getting it from a tap.

And it appears that their tactics are working. With some 92% of tap water meeting state and federal standards, the U.S. has the cleanest and safest public water supply in the world. Yet polls have shown that that a great majority of Americans worry a great deal about the public water supply.

To make matters worse, the supposedly healthy alternative is virtually unregulated. The water from a public utility is constantly monitored under Environmental Protection Agency standards, but bottled water does not have to meet those standards. In fact, independent testing of bottled water has indicated that microbiological impurities and high levels of fluoride and arsenic posed health concerns.

Misplaced Doubts

“Water fountains used to be everywhere, but they have slowly disappeared as public water is increasingly pushed out in favor of private control and profit,” writes Peter Gleick in his book Bottled & Sold. “[They] have become an anachronism, or even a liability, a symbol of the days when homes didn’t have taps and bottled water wasn’t available from every convenience store and corner concession stand. In our health-conscious society, we are afraid that public fountains, and our tap water in general, are sources of contamination and contagion.”

When towns and cities still didn’t have the means to provide all homes access to clean water, sanitary water fountains were a benefit to public health. The irony today is that public water is no longer viewed as a safe option, yet poorly regulated bottled water is.

Nine years ago, the high-end bottled-water brand Fiji began a marketing campaign in which it sniffed, “The label says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland.”

Clevelanders, angered they were being unfairly insulted because of some issues with their water decades back, took action. The city’s water utility even bought some bottles of Fiji and other top brands like Dasani, Evian and Aquafina and tested them against Cleveland tap water. And guess what? Cleveland’s tap water was the purest of them all. Moreover, Fiji had a 6.31 micrograms of arsenic per bottle. While under the amount of 10 micrograms allowed by the EPA and Food and Drug Administration, it was notably high in comparison.

But Cleveland only tested a few samples of bottled water. Consumers can’t be sure what they’re getting, as the contents can vary from bottle to bottle. That’s because bottled water, which is regulated by the FDA, doesn’t have to meetthe stricter standards the EPA requires. Tap water needs to undergo regular testing for bacteria and microbes such as E. coli, while bottled water doesn’t. Further, the EPA requires water suppliers to use certified labs to test their water, but there’s no such FDA requirement for water bottlers. The bottlers also don’t need to send off reports to regulators about problems they might find with their product. There are no requirements for disinfection or filtration for bottlers that water utilities must meet. Consumers are left at the mercy of a corporation to protect them from their product.

What’s in a Name?

While Fiji water actually comes from the South Pacific Island that bears its name, close to half of the bottled water bought by consumers is nothing more than filtered tap water with fancy names, according to Food & Water Watch. Much of the bottled water Americans drink, including top brands like Aquafina and Dasani, is pretty much the same stuff you get from your own faucet, perhaps run through an additional filter by the bottler.

http://ecowatch.com/2015/05/11/bottled-water-companies-california-drought/

...

Last week, Starbucks announced that it would be moving the production of its “globally responsible” Ethos Water brand from California to Pennsylvania within the next six months. Its Pennsylvania facility already bottles the water sold on the east coast.

Starbucks’ senior vice president of global responsibility and public policy John Kelly said, “We are committed to our mission to be a globally responsible company and to support the people of the state of California as they face this unprecedented drought. The decision to move our Ethos water sourcing from California and reduce our in-store water reductions by more than 25 percent are steps we are taking in partnership with state and local governments to accelerate water conservation.”

Ethos Water was founded in 2002 in Southern California, promising to donate a percentage of each sale to water projects in developing countries, currently amounting to five cents on the sale of each $1.95 bottle of water. The company was bought by Starbucks in 2005. Ethos has created partnerships with organizations such as the Oscars. Environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio was seen carrying a bottle at the awards ceremony, and fellow environmentalist Matt Damon has appeared in an ad for the brand.

The move follows a recent article in *Mother Jones* calling attention to the fact that its West Coast bottling plant is located in Merced, California, drawing its water from private springs in Baxter a few hours north of Merced, as well as from Merced city water. Both Baxter and Merced are in areas of “exceptional drought.”

“While bottled water accounts for just a small fraction of California’s total water use, some residents are nonetheless fed up with bottling plants that profit off their dwindling water supply,” said Mother Jones. “Protesters have begun staging events at Nestlé’s bottling facility in nearby Sacramento.”

Nestlé’s facility buys millions of gallons of Sacramento municipal water and also bottles spring water shipped in from Northern California counties. A grassroots group called the Crunch Nestlé Alliance has been organizing to shut down the plant.

Residents in Merced are also concerned about the Safeway-Lucerne Foods bottling plant in the city that’s pulling groundwater from local wells as they’re being asked to cut back on showers and stop watering their lawns.

The *Merced Sun-Star* quoted area resident Jandrea-Marie Gabrielle saying at a city council meeting, “Perhaps watering lawns are the least of California’s worries. You might think that in the midst of a drought emergency, diverting public fresh water supplies to bottle and selling them would be frowned upon.”

And while Starbucks is closing its bottled water facility, another will soon be opening in the arid state. The Crystal Geyser Water Company will be opening a plant in Mount Shasta that will take hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day from an aquifer that feeds the Sacramento River and provides drinking water for millions of people. The converted Coca-Cola plant is expected to begin operations this fall. While a company executive said it’s working with area residents to make sure its activities “will not impact the environment in any detrimental way,” local citizen Raven Stevens pointed out, “Crystal Geyser in one day plans to pump more water than any three of my neighbors will use in an entire year.”

California currently has no limits on the amount of groundwater that can be pumped from private property, although state regulations on water withdrawal from the most endangered aquifers with start phasing in after 2020—when the drought could be a decade old. Bottled water companies using water tapped on private property are exempt from the mandatory water cuts placed on cities and towns in March.

“Bottling water is a legal use of water under the law,” said Nancy Vogel, spokeswoman of the California Department of Water Resources.

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nice graphics, no links here

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/08/bottled-water-california-drought

Bottled Water Comes From the Most Drought-Ridden Places in the Country

Popular brands like Aquafina and Dasani source from catastrophically dry parts of the West.

By Julia Lurie | Mon Aug. 11, 2014 6:00 AM EDT

Social Title:

Your bottled water comes from the most drought-ridden places in the country

Social Dek:

Popular brands like Aquafina and Dasani source mainly from catastrophically dry parts of the West.

Update, 4/13/15: This article has been modified from its original version to include updated drought maps and information from the Desert Sun investigation [1].

Bottled-water drinkers, we have a problem: There's a good chance that your water comes from California, a state experiencing the third-driest year on record.

The details of where and how bottling companies get their water are often quite murky [2], but generally speaking, bottled water falls into two categories. The first is "spring water," or groundwater that's collected, according to the EPA [3], "at the point where water flows naturally to the earth's surface or from a borehole that taps into the underground source." About 55 percent [4] of bottled water in the United States is spring water, including Crystal Geyser and Arrowhead.

The other 45 percent comes from the municipal water supply, meaning that companies, including Aquafina and Dasani, simply treat tap water—the same stuff that comes out of your faucet at home—and bottle it up. (Weird, right?)

But regardless of whether companies bottle from springs or the tap, lots of them are using water in exactly the areas that need it most right now.

The map above shows the sources of water for four big-name companies that bottle in California. Aquafina and Dasani "sources" are the facilities where tap water is treated and bottled, whereas Crystal Geyser and Arrowhead"sources" refer to the springs themselves.

In the grand scheme of things, the amount of water used for bottling in California is only a tiny fraction of the amount of water used for food and beverage production—plenty of other bottled drinks use California's water, and a whopping 80 percent of the state's water supply goes toward agriculture. But still, the question remains: Why are Americans across the country drinking bottled water from drought-ridden California?

One reason is simply that California happens to be where some bottled water brands have set up shop. "You have to remember this is a 120-year-old brand," said Jane Lazgin, a representative for Arrowhead. "Some of these sources have long, long been associated with the brand." Lazgin acknowledges that, from an environmental perspective, "tap water is always the winner," but says that the company tries to manage its springs sustainably. The water inside the bottle isn't the only water that bottling companies require: Coca-Cola bottling plants, which produce Dasani, use 1.63 liters of water for every liter of beverage produced in California, according to Coca-Cola representative Dora Wong. "Our California facilities continue to seek ways to reduce overall water use," she wrote in an email.

Then there's the aforementioned murkiness of the industry: Companies aren't required to publicly disclose exactly where their sources are or how much water each facility bottles. Peter Gleick, author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession With Bottled Water [5], says, "I don't think people have a clue—no one knows" where their bottled water comes from. (Fun facts he's discovered in his research: Everest water comes from Texas, Glacier Mountain comes from Ohio, and only about a third of Poland Springs [4] water comes from the actual Poland Spring, in Maine.)

A recent Desert Sun investigation [1] reported that the Nestle Waters, the company that owns Arrowhead, has been transporting water out of the San Bernadino National Forest using a permit that expired in 1988. The Forest Service hadn't examined the impacts of the bottled water industry on the region. Since the investigation, Forest Service representatives have said that examining the permit is a "priority," and Lazgin wrote [6] that Arrowhead plans to comply with the permit renewal process.

Despite the fact that almost all US tap water is better regulated [7] and monitored than bottled, and despite the hefty environmental [2] footprint of the bottled water industry, perhaps the biggest reason that bottling companies are using water in drought zones is simply because we're still providing a demand for it: In 2012 in the United States alone, the industry produced about 10 billion gallons [8] of bottled water, with sales revenues at $12 billion.

As Gleick wrote [9], "This industry has very successfully turned a public resource into a private commodity." And consumers—well, we're drinking it up.

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/08/bottled-water-california-drought

Links:

[1] http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2015/03/05/bottling-water-california-drought/24389417/

[2] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/fiji-spin-bottle

[3] http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/faq/pdfs/fs_healthseries_bottlewater.pdf

[4] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/03/bottled-water-poland-spring-rubio

[5] http://www.amazon.com/Bottled-Sold-Story-Behind-Obsession/dp/1610911628

[6] http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2015/04/11/nestle-bottled-water-california-drought-water/25621915/

[7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/fiji-water-when-environme_b_789503.html

[8] http://www.bottledwater.org/economics/bottled-water-market

[9] http://scienceblogs.com/significantfigures/index.php/2013/04/25/bottled-water-sales-the-shocking-reality/

Recently, nearly 200,000 CREDO activists joined together to tell the U.S Forest Service to stop Nestle from pumping water out of a national forest in drought-stricken California. That helped put a spotlight on Nestle and launched a round of intense media scrutiny. But instead of deciding to do the right thing, as other companies like Starbucks¹ have done in the face of the drought, Nestle’s CEO decided to dig in and double down. When questioned in a recent radio interview about whether they would consider halting their water extraction, Nestle CEO Tim Brown stated: “Absolutely not. In fact, if I could increase it, I would.”²

Apparently, Nestle’s CEO has spent so much time focusing on driving up Nestle’s profits at any cost that he’s apparently lost any sense of corporate responsibility when it comes to bottling water. So this time we need to up the pressure even more by sending a message directly to Nestle.

:{Tell Nestle CEO Tim Brown: Exercise some corporate responsibility and end your water profiteering in drought-stricken California. Click here to sign the petition.:(style="font-weight:700"):}:

Unfortunately, Brown’s out-of-touch comments didn’t end there. In the same interview, he went so far as to blame consumers for Nestle’s practices, at one point stating, “If I stop bottling water tomorrow, people would buy another brand of bottled water...It’s driven by consumer demand, it’s driven by an on-the-go society that needs to hydrate.” Apparently he’s never heard of a re-usable water bottle.

Perhaps it’s not a complete surprise to see Nestle respond in such a tone-deaf manner by passing the buck and shirking responsibility. After all, this is the same corporation whose CEO once famously challenged the human right to water. During that same year, Nestle fought a decision by the Ministry of the Environment in Ontario, Canada that would limit its water-taking in times of severe drought.³

"Starbucks moves Ethos water from California after droughtshaming" The Washington Post, May 12, 2015
"Nestlé Waters CEO isn't stopping bottling in California, says new tech will save millions of gallons" Southern California Public Radio, May 14, 2015

"Organizations Denounce Nestle’s New Human Rights Impact Assessment as a Public Relations Stunt," Food & Water Watch, December 19, 2013.

http://www.newsweek.com/nestles-california-water-permit-expired-27-years-ago-321940

The International Bottled Water Association is the the trade association representing U.S. and international water bottlers, distributors and suppliers. It shares the same physical address as the American Beverage Association^[1]

Membership

On its website the IBWA does not disclose who its members are only stating that they "range in size from the original family-owned and operated water bottlers to giant, diversified food corporations who have added bottled water to their product lines. From the manufacturers of equipment to small distributors, to the rapidly increasing number of international members, are all important segments of the bottled water industry and IBWA."^[2]

Other SourceWatch Resources

American Beverage Association

Contact Details

International Bottled Water Association (IBWA)

1700 Diagonal Road, Suite 650

Alexandria, VA 22314

Phone: 703-683-5213

Fax: 703-683-4074

Information Hotline: 1-800-WATER-11

Email: ibwainfo AT bottledwater.org

Website: http://www.bottledwater.org/

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/08/bottled-water-california-drought

Bottled-water drinkers, we have a problem: There's a good chance that your water comes from California, a state experiencing the third-driest year on record.

The details of where and how bottling companies get their water are often quite murky, but generally speaking, bottled water falls into two categories. The first is "spring water," or groundwater that's collected, according to the EPA, "at the point where water flows naturally to the earth's surface or from a borehole that taps into the underground source." About 55 percent of bottled water in the United States is spring water, including Crystal Geyser and Arrowhead.

But regardless of whether companies bottle from springs or the tap, lots of them are using water in exactly the areas that need it most right now.

The map above shows the sources of water for four big-name companies that bottle in California. Aquafina and Dasani "sources" are the facilities where tap water is treated and bottled, whereas Crystal Geyser and Arrowhead "sources" refer to the springs themselves.

Then there's the aforementioned murkiness of the industry: Companies aren't required to publicly disclose exactly where their sources are or how much water each facility bottles. Peter Gleick, author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession With Bottled Water, says, "I don't think people have a clue—no one knows" where their bottled water comes from. (Fun facts he's discovered in his research: Everest water comes from Texas, Glacier Mountain comes from Ohio, and only about a third of Poland Springs water comes from the actual Poland Spring, in Maine.)

A recent *Desert Sun* investigation reported that the Nestle Waters, the company that owns Arrowhead, has been transporting water out of the San Bernadino National Forest using a permit that expired in 1988. The Forest Service hadn't examined the impacts of the bottled water industry on the region. Since the investigation, Forest Service representatives have said that examining the permit is a "priority," and Lazgin wrote that Arrowhead plans to comply with the permit renewal process.

Despite the fact that almost all US tap water is better regulated and monitored than bottled, and despite the hefty environmental footprint of the bottled water industry, perhaps the biggest reason that bottling companies are using water in drought zones is simply because we're still providing a demand for it: In 2012 in the United States alone, the industry produced about 10 billion gallons of bottled water, with sales revenues at $12 billion.

As Gleick wrote, "This industry has very successfully turned a public resource into a private commodity." And consumers—well, we're drinking it up.

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npr

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126833795

In 1976, the average American consumed a gallon and a half of bottled water each year. By 2008, the number had grown to about 30 gallons of bottled water per person in the U.S.

That amount, says Peter Gleick, "equals about 115 liters of water each year, most of it from single-serving plastic containers."

Gleick, a freshwater expert, is the author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water. In the book, he examines how drinking water was commodified and branded over the past 30 years, turning what was once a free natural resource into a multibillion-dollar global industry — while raising questions about the taste and safety of drinking tap water.

"I think for the most part, we have great tap water," Gleick tells Terry Gross. "It's not always the case — but it usually is."

Gleick is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the International Water Academy. In 2001, he was named a "visionary on the environment" by the BBC. He is the president and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit environmental research institute, where he researches the connections between climate change and water use.

Tap water is poison.

—A flyer touting the stock of a Texas bottled water company.

When we're done, tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes.

—Susan Wellington, president of the Quaker Oats Company's United States beverage division.

September 15, 2007, was a big day for the alumni, family, and fans of the University of Central Florida and the UCF Knights football team. After years of waiting and hoping, the University of Central Florida had finally built their own football stadium — the new Bright House Networks arena. Under clear skies, and with temperatures nearing 100 degrees, a sell-out crowd of 45,622 was on hand to watch the first-ever real UCF home game against the Texas Longhorns, a national powerhouse. "I never thought we'd see this, but we sure are proud to have a stadium on campus," said UCF alumnus and Knight fan Tim Ball as he and his family tailgated in the parking lot before the game. And in an exciting, three-hour back-and-forth contest, the UCF Knights almost pulled off an upset before losing in the final minutes 35 to 32.

Knight supporters were thrilled and left thirsting for more — literally. Fans found out the hard way that their new $54-million stadium had been built without a single drinking water fountain. And for "security" reasons, no one could bring water into the stadium. The only water available for overheated fans was $3 bottled water from the concessionaires or water from the bathroom taps, and long before the end of the game, the concessionaires had run out of bottled water. Eighteen people were taken to local hospitals and sixty more were treated by campus medical personnel for heat-related illnesses. The 2004 Florida building code, in effect in 2005 when the UCF Board of Trustees approved the stadium design, mandated that stadiums and other public arenas have a water fountain for every 1,000 seats, or half that number if "bottled water dispensers" are available. Under these requirements, the arena should have been built with at least twenty water fountains. Furthermore, a spokesman for the International Code Council in Washington, which developed Florida's building code, said, "Selling bottled water out of a concession stand is not what the code meant."

The initial reaction from the University was swift and remarkably unapologetic: UCF spokesman Grant Heston appeared on the local TV news to argue that the codes in place when the stadium was designed didn't require fountains. A few days after the game, as news of the hospitalizations was reverberating, University President John Hitt said, "We will look at adding the water fountains, but I have to say to you I don't think that's the answer to this problem. We could have had 50 water fountains and still had a problem on Saturday." Al Harms, UCF's vice president for strategic planning and the coordinator for the operations of the stadium, told the Orlando Sentinel, "We won't make a snap decision" about installing fountains in the new stadium. Harms did promise that they would triple the amount of bottled water available for sale, and give away one free bottle per person at the next game. Harms also said, apparently without a trace of sarcasm, "It's our way of saying we're sorry."

For some UCF students, this wasn't enough. One of them, Nathaniel Dorn, mobilized in twenty-first-century fashion. He created a Facebook group, Knights for Free Water, which quickly attracted nearly 700 members. He and several other students showed up at a packed school hearing, talked to local TV and print media, and ridiculed the school's offer of a free bottle of water. Under this glare of attention the University did an abrupt about-face and announced that ten fountains would be installed by the next game and fifty would be installed permanently.

All of a sudden public water fountains have vanished and bottled water is everywhere: in every convenience store, beverage cooler, and vending machine. In student backpacks, airplane beverage carts, and all of my hotel rooms. At every conference and meeting I go to. On restaurant menus and school lunch counters. In early 2007, as I waited for a meeting in Silicon Valley, I watched a steady stream of young employees pass by on their way to or from buildings on the Google campus. Nearly all were carrying two items: a laptop and a throw-away plastic bottle of water. When I entered the lobby and checked in at reception, I was told to help myself to something to drink from an open cooler containing fruit juices and rows of commercial bottled water. As I walked to my meeting, I passed cases of bottled water being unloaded near the cafeteria.

Water fountains used to be everywhere, but they have slowly disappeared as public water is increasingly pushed out in favor of private control and profit.

Water fountains have become an anachronism, or even a liability, a symbol of the days when homes didn't have taps and bottled water wasn't available from every convenience store and corner concession stand. In our health-conscious society, we're afraid that public fountains, and our tap water in general, are sources of contamination and contagion. It used to be the exact opposite — in the 1800s, when our cities lacked widespread access to safe water, there were major movements to build free public water fountains throughout America and Europe.

In London in the mid-1800s, water was beginning to be piped directly into the homes of the city's wealthier inhabitants. The poor, however, relied on private water vendors and neighborhood wells that were often broken or tainted by contamination and disease, like the famous Broad Street pump that spread cholera throughout its neighborhood. At the time of London's Great Exhibition in 1851, conceived to showcase the triumphs of British technology, science, and innovation, Punch Magazine wrote: "Whoever can produce in London a glass of water fit to drink will contribute the best and most universally useful article in the whole exhibition." Just three years after the Exhibition, thousands of Londoners would die in the third massive cholera outbreak to hit the city since 1800.

By the middle of the twentieth century, spectacular efforts to improve water-quality treatment and major investments in modern drinking-water systems had almost completely eliminated the risks of unsafe water. Those of us who have the good fortune to live in the industrialized world now take safe drinking water entirely for granted. We turn on a faucet and out comes safe, often free fresh water. Notwithstanding the UCF stadium fiasco, we're rarely more than a few feet from potable water no matter where we are. But those efforts and investments are in danger of being wasted, and the public benefit of safe tap water lost, in favor of private gain in the form of little plastic water bottles.

The growth of the bottled water industry is a story about twenty-first-century controversies and contradictions: poverty versus glitterati; perception versus reality; private gain versus public loss. Today people visit luxury water "bars" stocked with bottles of water shipped in from every corner of the world. Water "sommeliers" at fancy restaurants push premium bottled water to satisfy demand and boost profits. Airport travelers have no choice but to buy bottled water at exorbitant prices because their own personal water is considered a security risk. Celebrities tout their current favorite brands of bottled water to fans. People with too much money and too little sense pay $50 or more for plain water in a fancy glass bottle covered in fake gems, or for "premium" water supposedly bottled in some exotic place or treated with some magical process.

In its modern form, bottled water is a new phenomenon, growing from a niche mineral-water product with a few wealthy customers to a global commodity found almost everywhere. The recent expansion of bottled water sales has been extraordinary. In the late 1970s, around 350 million gallons of bottled water were sold in the United States — almost entirely sparkling mineral water and large bottles to supply office water coolers — or little more than a gallon and a half per person per year. As the figure below shows, between 1976 and 2008, sales of bottled water in the United States doubled, doubled again, doubled again, and then doubled again. In 2008, nearly 9 billion gallons (over 34 billion liters) of bottled water were packaged and sold in the United States and five times this amount was sold around the world, feeding a global business of water providers, bottlers, truckers, and retailers at a cost to consumers of over a hundred billion dollars.

Americans now drink more bottled water than milk or beer — in fact, the average American is now drinking around 30 gallons, or 115 liters, of bottled water each year, most of it from single-serving plastic containers.Bottled water has become so ubiquitous that it's hard to remember that it hasn't always been here. As I write this sentence I'm sitting in the cafe in the basement of the capitol building in Sacramento, California, and all I have to do is lift my eyes from my computer screen — right in front of me are vending machines selling both Dasani and Aquafina. Yet, like UCF football fans, I can't tell you where the nearest water fountain is.

Millions of Americans still drink tap water at home and in restaurants. But there is a war on for the hearts, minds, and pocketbooks of tap water drinkers, a huge market that water bottlers cannot afford to ignore. The war on the tap is an undeclared war, for the most part, but in recent years, more and more subtle (and not so subtle) campaigns that play up the supposed health risks of tap water, or the supposed health advantages of bottled water, have been launched by private water bottlers.

How do you convince consumers to buy something that is essentially the same as a far cheaper and more easily accessible alternative? You promote perceived advantages of your product, and you emphasize the flaws in your competitor's product. For water bottlers this means selling safety, style, and convenience, and playing on consumer's fears. Fear is an effective tool. Especially fear of sickness and of invisible contamination. If we can be made to fear our tap water, the market for bottled water skyrockets.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, therefore, when I opened my mailbox and found a flyer with a cover image of a goldfish swimming in a glass of drinking water. "There is something in this glass you do not want to drink. And it's not the fish," shouted the bold and colorful text in the mailer, offering me home delivery of bottles of Calistoga Mountain Spring Water. "How can you be sure your water is safe? Take a closer look at the water in our glass. Can you tell if it's pure? Unfortunately, you can't." And the solution offered? The "Path to Purity" lies with bottles of water, delivered to your door by truck, under a monthly contract.

"Tap water is poison!" declares another flyer my neighbor Roy received in the mail in early 2007 touting the stock of Royal Spring Water Inc., a Texas bottled water company. "Americans no longer trust their tap water. . . . Clearly, people are more worried than ever about what comes out of their taps." Roy, a thoughtful guy, told me he was actually more worried about what came out of his mailbox than his tap. The website of another bottler says, "Tap water can be inconsistent. . . . The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reported that hundreds of tap water sources have failed to meet minimum standards."

These attacks could be dismissed as the inappropriate actions of a few small players, except that some of the world's biggest bottlers have also targeted tap water. In 2000, shortly before he was made chairman of PepsiCo's North American Beverage and Food division, Robert S. Morrison publicly declared, "The biggest enemy is tap water. . . . We're not against water — it just has its place. We think it's good for irrigation and cooking." That same year, Susan Wellington, president of the Quaker Oats Company's United States beverage division, candidly told industry analysts, "When we're done, tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes." "We need to change the way we sell water," said industry analyst Kathleen Ransome at the 2006 International Bottled Water Association annual convention in Las Vegas. "At what point will consumers turn to the tap?"

Subtler advertising approaches also play on our fears. PepsiCo hired actress Lisa Kudrow to promote Aquafina with the phrase "So pure, we promise nothing" in a campaign Brandweek magazine jokingly called the "Nothing" campaign. Kinley in India offers "Trust in every drop," while another Indian bottler, Bisleri, advertises "Bisleri. Play safe."

Officially, the large bottled water industry associations advise their members to refrain from attacks on tap water. Some bottled water companies have signed up to the International Bottled Water Association's voluntary code of advertising, "which encourages members not to disparage tap water." Alas, as Captain Barbossa notes in the popular movie Pirates of the Caribbean, "the code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules," and even the bottled water associations cannot resist making critical comments about tap water. "The difference between bottled water and tap water is that bottled water's quality is consistent," said Stephen Kay, IBWA spokesman in May 2001, implying, of course, that tap water quality isn't and thus worse. In 2002, Kay said, "Some people in their municipal markets have the luxury of good water. Others do not." Similarly, the website of the Australasian Bottled Water Association pokes barbs at tap water, saying, "Some people also wish to avoid certain chemicals used in the treatment of public water supplies, such as chlorine and fluoride, and are therefore turning to the chemical-free alternative."

In the fall of 2007 I attended the IBWA annual convention in Las Vegas. Las Vegas is a pretty incongruous place to hold a bottled water convention. Planted in the heart of one of the driest regions in the United States, it has very limited access to water. Yet the IBWA's major social event is a golf tournament played on water-intensive grass that consumes precious, limited water. The bottled water convention itself is a cross between a pep rally, a political campaign meeting, and a how-to seminar for individuals hoping to cash in on the bottled water craze. I wandered from session to session, from discussions of marketing strategies to closed-door meetings on how to deal with new regulatory efforts by federal agencies. I listened to talks on how to counter the efforts of anti-bottled water activists and watched demonstrations of the latest machines for bottling water. The culmination of the convention was the keynote presentation of Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which promotes a libertarian, free-market agenda. Smith extolled the virtues of a world where business entrepreneurs could make money selling water in bottles. The problem, Smith told me afterward, without a hint of irony, was that water "suffers most from being treated as a common property resource." Smith believes that "water policy could benefit greatly from exploring the strategies that have been used to produce oil."

It is this belief that water is fundamentally no different than oil or any other private commodity that lies at the heart of the controversy over selling water. A few months after the IBWA convention, Smith's Competitive Enterprise Institute launched a special project called "Enjoy Bottled Water" in which they criticize the safety of tap water, ridicule opponents of bottled water, and promote the industry's merits. "Bottled water is substantially different from tap water," the CEI website declares. "When compared to bottled water, risks appear to be somewhat higher for tap water. . . . Available data indicates that bottled water has a better safety record." The CEI is so ideologically anti-regulation that the site says, "The fact that anyone would want to ban or regulate a healthy and safe option like bottled water is really absurd." It may come as no surprise to note that Coca-Cola, maker of Dasani bottled water, was the largest single supporter of CEI's annual fundraising dinner in 2008.

The campaign against municipal tap water has been more than just words. In 2001, documents found on a Coca-Cola company website revealed that it had a formal program to actively discourage restaurant customers from drinking tap water. Working with the Olive Garden restaurant chain, Coca-Cola developed a six-step program to help the restaurant reduce what they call "tap water incidence" — the unprofitable problem of customers drinking tap water rather than ordering revenue-producing beverages. "Some 20 percent of consumers drink tap water exclusively in Casual Dining restaurants," the program lamented. "This trend significantly cuts into retailer profits. . . . Research was conducted to better understand why tap water consumption is so prevalent and why consumers are making this beverage choice. . . . This research provides the valuable insight and understanding needed to convert water drinkers to profit-producing beverages."

These documents, very quickly pulled from official websites when the media picked up the story, had already been downloaded and reposted elsewhere. "This is awesome," commented one reader. "It's what corporations say to each other behind customers' backs, only it happens to be on the Web where mortals can see it."

It isn't just bottled water companies that have tap water in their sights. Full-service restaurants have recognized the profit-generating potential of bottled water. Servers in restaurants operated by the Omni Hotels and Resorts, for example, are trained to describe "the characteristics of the waters being offered and are also trained to approach the table with chilled bottles of water. They offer it to the guest as an option to tap water," according to Fernando Salazar, corporate director of the food and beverage division in 2006. "It's just part of the server's presentation to offer bottled water first before offering tap water," says Salazar. "Those restaurants that are not yet doing this are missing an opportunity to increase profits."

Brita, a subsidiary of the Clorox Company that sells home water filters, has also been particularly aggressive in maligning tap water, which is their direct competitor in the home market. One of Brita's advertising campaigns claimed that a Brita filter "turns tap water into drinking water." Other Brita ads say, "We'd like to clear up a few things about tap water." "Tap water becomes wonderful water." "Too often, impurities are finding their way into the water. While you may not be able to see them, you don't want them." One of Brita's television ads aired in the United States and Canada took a particularly graphic approach, with the camera focused on a glass of water in a kitchen. Viewers watch the glass drain and then refill to the background sound of a flushing toilet. Superimposed on the image were the words "Tap and toilet water come from the same source," and the voice-over at the end of the commercial asked viewers: "Don't you deserve better?" In the magazine version, the advertising copy read, "You deserve better than the water you mop with."

These efforts sparked the ire of both the American Water Works Association, which represents municipal water agencies, and its Canadian counterpart. The Associations publicly objected to Brita's "unsavory tactics" and called on Brita to cancel the commercials. Advertising Standards Canada, which regulates advertising, received eleven formal complaints and after reviewing the ads ruled that they "conveyed an inaccurate representation of a product/service/ commercial activity; omitted relevant information; unfairly demeaned, disparaged, and discredited another product/service/commercial activity (i.e., municipally supplied water); and misled consumers by playing upon their fears of the safety of drinking water."

Looking at the massive growth in bottled water consumption, it is apparent that the bottled water companies have been winning the war against tap water. And in one of their latest campaign tactics, the bottled water industry is now arguing in debates, Congressional testimony, advertising, and media campaigns that the growth of bottled water sales doesn't come at the expense of tap water, but rather other commercial beverages. In 2003, Stephen Kay, spokesman for the International Bottled Water Association, told E — The Environmental Magazine that "bottled water's competition is soft drinks, not tap water." In 2006, he told the Chicago Tribune's "Morning Call" column that "bottled water's competition is not your faucet but the soft drinks, juices, sport drinks, and teas that people buy while they're on the go."

The industry continues to push this argument. In August 2007, they bought full-page ads in the New York Times and other papers. "Whether it comes from a faucet or a bottle, drinking water is an easy step people can take to lead a healthier lifestyle. So, as far as we're concerned, the drink in everyone's purse, backpack, and lunch box should be water." In December 2007, in testimony to the U.S. Congress, theIBWA President, Joe Doss, said, "Consumers also choose bottled water over other beverages because it does not contain calories, caffeine, sugar, artificial flavors or colors, alcohol and other ingredients."

Bottled water consumption is good, the industry argues, because the growth of bottled water sales has come not at the expense of tap water, but of other beverages.

This is an intriguing and potentially powerful argument, except that it is false. After hearing the industry repeat this claim over and over, I went and looked up the actual numbers. Are we really drinking bottled water instead of soft drinks and other consumer beverages, as the industry argues, or are we actually drinking less tap water? The U.S. Department of Commerce collects and publishes excellent data on beverage consumption. Contrary to what the bottled water industry argues, the numbers show that we are buying more bottled water and carbonated soft drinks, and drinking less of everything else, including milk, coffee, tea, fruit juices, beer, wine, hard alcohol, and especially tap water.

The graph below clearly shows the growth in consumption of both soft drinks and bottled water at the expense of everything else we drink. Indeed, between 1980 and 2006, data on beverage consumption reveals that on average, each of us is actually drinking around 36 gallons per year less tap water now. With what have we replaced this water? Soda and bottled water. Over this same period of time, our consumption of carbonated soft drinks has grown by 17 gallons per person per year, our consumption of bottled water has grown by 25 gallons per person per year, and our purchases of all other beverages, including milk, juices, beer, tea, coffee, and hard liquor have dropped by 6 gallons per year.

The beverage companies are winning the war on tap water. As long as people can be made to fear tap water, they will seek out alternatives they think offer more safety. But we have to ask: is bottled water actually any safer? What do we know about what's actually in our tap water — or in the bottles of water we buy? And how safe is it to drink?

History

priestly perrier

Global sales:{:(style="margin-right:0px;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Global bottled water sales have increased dramatically over the past several decades, reaching a valuation of around $60 billion and a volume of more than 115,000,000 cubic metres (3.0×10^10 US gal) in 2006.^[25] U.S. sales reached around 30 billion bottles of water in 2008, a slight drop from 2007 levels ^[26]

The rate of consumption more than quadrupled between 1990 and 2005.^[27] Spring water and purified tap water are currently the leading global sellers. By one estimate, approximately50 billion bottles of water are consumed per year in the U.S. and around 200 billion bottles globally.^[28]

^...

^epa ^regs ^stricter ^on ^tap ^than ^bottle

Globally, there is an intensifying environmental backlash against bottled water usage. As global consumption of bottled water soars, environmental groups such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Greenpeace have warned of the huge environmental footprint of the plastic in which the water is packaged.^[58]

In 2001 a WWF study, "Bottled water: understanding a social phenomenon", warned that in many countries, bottled water may be no safer or healthier than tap water and it sold for up to 1,000 times the price. It said the booming market would put severe pressure on recycling plastics and could lead to landfill sites drowning in mountains of plastic bottles.^[58] Also, the study discovered that the production of bottled water uses more water than the consumer actually buys in the bottle itself.^[58]

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Bottled water is more expensive than municipally-supplied tap water. Tap water sources and delivery systems (taps and faucets) are fixed in place while bottled water is available at many differing price points and in a variety of size formats.

"The consumption of bottled and filtered water has dramatically increased in the United States during the past decade, with bottled water sales tripling to about $4 billion a year. More than 50% of the US population drinks bottled water and 'people spend from 240 to over 10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water than they typically do for tap water.' An annual supply of bottled water for a person who consumes 8 glasses a day would cost approximately$200; the same amount of tap water would cost approximately $0.33. In general, women are more likely to drink bottled water than men, and Hispanic women are the group most likely to drink bottled water."^[57]

The Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC) states that in 2013, the average wholesale price per gallon of domestic non-sparkling bottled water was $1.21. BMC’s research also shows that consumers actually tend to buy bottled water in bulk from supermarkets (25.3%) or large discount retailers (57.9%) because it costs significantly less. Convenience stores are likely to have higher prices (4.5%), as do drug stores (2.8%). The remaining 9.5% is accounted for through vending machines, cafeterias and other food service outlets, and other types of sales.^[59]

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Main article: Bottled water ban

In response to environmental concerns, a few localities and U.S. colleges are banning bottled water sales.

In 2009, the small New South Wales town of Bundanoon voted to become the first town in the world to ban the selling or dispensing of bottled water.^[29][60] Bundanoon caught the attention of many other cities around the world.^[29][61]

After a Sydney-based beverage company wanted to open a water extraction plant in the New South Wales town Bundanoon, residents outlawed the sale of bottled water. The town continues to fight the company's proposal in court.^[58] "In the same week the New South Wales state premier also banned all state departments and agencies from buying bottled water because of its huge environmental footprint, joining more than 70 cities in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom that have banned bottled water in their departments."

In 2012, the town of Concord, Massachusetts became the first in the United States to ban the sale of bottled water. Specifically, sales of non-sparkling, unflavored drinking water in single-serving polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles of 1 liter (34 ounces) or less are prohibited. The ban went into effect on January 1, 2013.

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In the United States, bottled water and tap water are regulated by different federal agencies: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates bottled water and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates the quality of tap water. Under the Safe Drinking Water Act the EPA has set maximum contaminant levels for approximately 90 contaminants that might be found in drinking water and 15 secondary maximum contaminant levels.^[62]

Often, enforcement and monitoring of water quality is uneven and irregular for both tap water and bottled water. While tap water contamination incidents must be reported promptly to the public, the same is not true for bottled water, and while contamination of bottled water does occur, many instances have never received public notice until recently (see, for example, the list of more than 100 bottled water recalls).^[63]