[Infowarrior] - OT: The Bottled Water Madness

[Richard Forno]

I'm reminded of Lewis Black's skit on the Bottled Water
Phenomenon.........rf

The Bottled Water Madness
http://www.counterpunch.org/lack07252006.html
By LARRY LACK

The bottled water industry is a prime example of why P.T. Barnum, not Adam
Smith, should be anointed as capitalism¹s patron saint. Aside from its
usefulness in remote areas during disasters and emergencies, bottled water
is an entirely  needless affectation. The fears about the safety of public
water supplies that its purveyors play on are exaggerated nonsense. But the
enormous global bottled water industry built on these false fears undercuts
public water, disfigures landscapes and exposes trusting bottled water
consumers to serious health risks.

 Hyped by label and advertising images of mountain crags and crystal
streams, single serving bottles of plain water (and their flavored and
mineral or vitamin-enriched variations) are an omnipresent feature of modern
life. Bottled water is less a commodity than a fashion trend. Its hucksters
have used advertising to transform their mundane products into icons of
health, fitness, youth and beauty, their pushers would have us think, from
pristine springs.

 In 1990, about two billion gallons of bottled water were sold worldwide. By
2003 more than 30 billion gallons were consumed and sales, which in that
year topped $35 billion, have continued to rise. Tens of millions of
consumers now shun tap water and rely on bottled water exclusively. For this
dubious privilege, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC), they pay between 240 and 10,000 times the price of tap water ­
including ten to fifteen cents per bottle to cover the cost of advertising.
Surprisingly, despite all the current outrage over the price of gasoline,
most North American consumers are casually forking over more for bottled
water ­ about a buck a quart ­ than they are for gas.

Approximately one fourth of all bottled water and as much as 40 per cent of
that sold in North America is simply municipal tap water run through filters
and treated with minerals or other additives. The rest of the bottled water
found in stores is pumped from groundwater aquifers many of which have been
severely depleted by these water ³takings².

 Safety testing of bottled water is seldom required or done, but published
studies indicate that heavy metals and other toxic chemicals as well as
health threatening bacteria are found with surprising frequency in bottled
water which, ironically, is marketed based on claims of ³purity². Both
chemical and bacterial contaminations tend to increase when water is stored
in sealed bottles for long periods of time.

 Bacteria can get through filtering systems, and, if they are not well
managed, these systems themselves may contaminate the water they are meant
to purify. A comprehensive 2004 Dutch study found that 40 per cent of 68
commercial mineral waters tested were contaminated with either bacteria or
fungi. The study¹s author warned that bacteria in bottled water could
threaten the health of consumers with compromised immune systems and called
for more effective regulation of bottled water. A 1993 study published in
the Canadian Journal of Microbiology and a follow-up study in 1998 found
that nearly 40 per cent of the samples of bottled water sold in Canada from
1981 through 1997 contained bacteria in excess of applicable safety
standards.

 Bottled water is responsible for an enormous increase in world production
of plastic bottles. Surging sales of bottled water coincided with and may
help account for a 56 per cent increase in U.S. plastic resin manufacture in
the U.S.A. between 1995 and 2001 (from 32 million tons to over 50 million
tons annually). Consuming critical supplies of petroleum and natural gas,
plastic bottle factories create and release toxic wastes, including benzine,
xylene,  and oxides of ethylene into the environment. Toxic and carcinogenic
constituents of plastic bottles, such as the phthalates that are used to
make some containers flexible, can contaminate their contents during
transportation or storage.  In virtually every part of the world discarded
water bottles have become a major component of roadside litter. They also
swell landfills and release hazardous toxins into air and water when they
are burned in backyard barrels or industrial incinerators. Despite the
deliberately misleading circled arrows displayed on water bottles, in most
places where they are sold single service bottled water containers are
neither recycled nor returnable for refunds.

 This unsettling information, and a great deal more, is found in a
wide-ranging overview of the bottled water business, In the Bottle, An
Exposé of the Bottled Water Industry (Polaris Institute, Ottawa, 2005).
Thanks to its focus on the consequences of treating water as a commodity, In
the Bottle is being used as a study and action guide by environmental and
political groups in Canada, including the Council of Canadians and Kairos,
Canada¹s network of progressive Christians. Authored by the director  of the
Polaris Institute, Tony Clarke, this initial edition of In the Bottle is
offered as an early step in what seems to be a long-range strategy. At the
end of each chapter Clarke solicits local information and suggestions from
readers by posing questions and requesting email feedback.

 In the Bottle includes these additional well-documented (no pun intended)
facts about the worldwide boom in bottled water:

 * Nearly one-fifth of North Americans use bottled water exclusively for
their daily hydration. Canadians consume more bottled water than coffee,
tea, apple juice or milk. In the past two decades bottled water sales have
exploded and now far surpass sales of soft drinks and nearly all other
sources of revenue for the beverage and food conglomerates that dominate the
bottled water business.

 * Four companies ­ two based in the U.S.A., Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, and two
in Europe, Nestlé and Danone (the makers of Dannon yogurt) ­ account for
most worldwide sales of bottled water. Nestlé¹s bottled water brands,
including Perrier, Poland Springs, Pure Life, Calistoga and a dozen others,
and Danone¹s Evian, Crystal and other brands, are pumped from natural
aquifers in many countries, sometimes resulting in dry wells, regional water
shortages, and major protests.

 Pepsi¹s Aquafina (North America¹s best selling bottled water) and Coke¹s
Dasani are filtered and/or ³re-mineralized² municipal tap water. (To
complicate the corporate picture, under a licensing agreement also markets
several of Danone¹s brands of water, including Evian and Sparkletts, in
North America

 * Bottled water ads, product label language and illustrations are often
egregiously misleading. For example, according to the Polaris report, Alaska
Premium Glacier bottled water  ³is drawn from the municipal water system in
Juneau, Alaska, specifically, pipe # 111241, which is not a glacier².

 * In the U.S.A. and Canada, bottled water is subject to far less rigorous
testing than tap water. North America¹s hundreds of water bottling plants
(an In the Bottle appendix lists 70 of these with their sources of water and
the brands they produce) are monitored by public health officials whose
numbers are minute. Quoting a 1999 Natural Resources Defense Council  report
(Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?), the Polaris report notes that the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration¹s bottled water regulatory and safety
assurance staff then consisted of less than two full-time positions.

* As a result, most water bottling plants in the U.S.A. are inspected only
about once every five or six years. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency
manages to inspect Canada¹s water bottlers, on average, every three years.
Yet bottled water ad campaigns encourage consumers to question the safety of
public tap water, which in developed countries is constantly monitored and
held to strict standards that many bottled waters could not meet.

 In addition to exposing the pattern of irresponsible practices of the big
four players in the bottled water business, In the Bottle makes a compelling
case for keeping public water public. It also informs its readers on the
pitiful employment record of the $12 billion North American bottled water
behemoth which in 2002 provided just 6,709 mostly low-wage jobs.

 As this report  for community water activists recounts the damage done by
bottled water ­ including depletion of key agricultural aquifers and
pesticide contamination of water sold in India (Coke) and subcontracting for
slave labor in Burma (Pepsi) ­ it tempers outrage with accounts of
successful educational campaigns and models for corrective action drawn from
the home front in the U.S.A. and Canada.

 While the report includes lots of useful graphs, pages of footnotes and
supporting statistics from many sources, the cascade of information packed
into In the Bottle cries out for an index. This one defect aside, the
Polaris report offers readers ready access to bottled water basics in a
magazine-style format that¹s lively and engaging. Combined with its unique
distribution strategy of motivating and empowering community groups, In the
Bottle may reach and inspire enough readers to produce some useful changes
in how communities in North America relate to the water that most of us
still take for granted.

 In the Bottle¹sconcluding chapter highlights promising measures ­ mostly
requiring effective regulation by government ­ for reducing the health risks
and environmental damage caused by the excesses of the bottled water
juggernaut. Apart from the obvious fstep we all can take by staying off
bottled water ourselves [we were never on it, Editors] and encouraging
others to do so, first  among the sensible policies In the Bottle recommends
is adequate funding for rebuilding public water infrastructure.  Future
editions of the Polaris report should include an account of the quirky but
determined Water Liberation Movement in Germany. Its  adherents, after
calculating that more than one per cent of Europe¹s surface waters had been
³locked in bottles², invaded supermarkets and convenience stores in groups
and poured all the bottled water they could grab into drains, green strips
and gutters on the streets outside. Their hope was that the water they were
³liberating² from those bottles would recharge the desiccated water cycle
and be on tap to slake the thirst of prodigal humanity while coursing
non-commercially to the sea.

Larry Lack is a writer living in New Brunswick, Canada. He can be reached at
lackward at nbnet.nb.ca