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Loading...Bottled Water Industry Waging Insidious War On Tap Water
How did it happen that the bottled water industry can take what is clean, readily available and free in the west, package it in non-biodegradable plastic, and sell it back to consumers at highly inflated prices?
How could so many customers fall for this trick?
Not only that, but profits continue to rise. In 2010, more than 2 billion liters were consumed in the UK, which equates to 33 liters per person, a figure projected to rise to 40 liters by 2020.
In the US, more than 40 billion liters were sold last year, in an estimated 28 billion plastic bottles that it took 17m barrels of oil to manufacture (enough to fuel about 100,000 cars for the entire year). The industry in the US is worth $22 billion a year and sales are increasing at a rate of 5.4 per cent annually.
On an even more depressing side note, nearly 8 out of every 10 of those bottles ends up in a landfill, translating to about a 23 percent recycling rate.
Why Do Consumers Continue To Buy Bottled Water?
One reason is the aggressive marketing campaign that is being waged by the bottled water industry. In the UK last month, the Natural Hydration Council (NHC), an industry body formed by the UK’s three biggest bottlers: Nestlé Waters (makers of Buxton, Perrier and San Pellegrino), Danone Waters (Evian and Volvic) and Highland Spring, handed its lucrative public relations account to Pegasus PR, whose clients include Pfizer and Bayer.
From The Ecologist:
Pegasus’s role is to ensure the NHC’s ‘authoritative voice in the hydration debate is heard more clearly’ and consolidate the successes of its predecessor, Munro & Foster, tasked in 2009 with preventing bottled water from being compared to tap water.
The NHC was formed in 2008 to prevent declining sales: 2,240m litres of bottled water were drunk in 2006, 2,125m in 2007 and 2,005m in 2008. Price, negative blind tastings (consumers prefer tap or perceive no difference) and campaigns such as those run by London’s Evening Standard, to encourage people to ask for tap water in restaurants, all played their part.
Apparently the campaign worked: by 2009, domestic consumption had bounced back to 2,040m liters, then to 2,050m liters in 2010; 2011 figures are expected to be around 2,100m liters.
Your Right To Choose Is At Stake!
In the US, the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) has cleverly turned bottled water into a freedom of choice issue. It likes to point out, as it did in 2008 when Toronto City Council chose to prevent plastic bottles from being sold on municipal premises, that ‘less healthy beverages [are] packaged in a denser grade of plastic at twice the volume of bottled water’.
The IBWA is also attempting to make the issue a constitutional one through its consumer arm, Bottled Water Matters, a ‘pro-bottle’ internet campaign aimed at encouraging Americans to stand up for their right to bottled water.
According to its video: ‘There are people who want to take your choice away, people who want bottled water off store shelves because they think it’s unnecessary, but you know that’s not true.’ ‘Bottled water is one of the healthiest drinks on the shelf’ and “Your freedom of choice is at stake.”
Thankfully, Not Everyone Believes These Lies
However, more than 90 US universities – including Harvard, Brown and Vermont – have banned or are intending to ban bottled water on campus. New students are being given stainless-steel bottles and asked to refill from filtered water taps. Meanwhile more than 100 towns and cities have voted to ban bottled water to reduce waste.
Read more: bottled water, green living, international bottled water association, national hydration council, plastics recycling, recycling, tap water
Photo Credit: noomii
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
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+ add your ownThere is a couple of things to remember when reusing water bottles or even the cool refillable drinking bottles that are around.
Always wash the bottle every day around the rim where you drink, the lip or curve of the bottle interior and the cap.
And DONT leave them in the sun. The bottles break down like anything else in the sun and can put nasty chemicals into your water.
A couple of years ago a study in Perth WA, Australia looked at putting tap water into bottles and selling it. They sold out fast. I do not know the question behind the study or even what the outcome was but I remember thinking how stupid people where then. I think this just proves we live in a a throw-away society and people really are getting dumber. =-(
Thanks. /will try to bring water from home.
Back in the 80s Consumer Reports analyzed every major and some smaller brands worldwide and came to the conclusion that the best water there is is New York City tap water. Every time I'm in NY and see the pretentious types drinking their bottled water I just smirk and remember that.
Then there's Perrier which a comedian friend of mine used to refer to as derriere water which comes from springs near the French radioactive dump sites. Yum yum, drink it up!
If only avoiding fluoride in water was as simple as buying bottled water (although at a HUGE cost to the environment. 90% is still absorbed through skin which makes it pointless drinking only bottled water and using it in cooking.
Thanks for the article.
We drink nothing but Arrowhead water (one of Nestle's many "mountain spring" brands). Seriously, the label's signature spring feeds our entire water district, so the same stuff in their bottles comes right out of our tap. And since we don't like the taste from either source (worst-tasting local bottled water IMO), we have a 4-stage filter under our sink that leaves it tasting better than anything bought in a plastic container.
Oh, and for the 25 cents you might pay for the cheapest bottle available, I can get 5 gallons.
THANKS.
Banning bottled water is a great idea. I'm glad they apply it in many universities and cities already :) Hope it continues.
Willimantic tap water has been really good tasting the past few years now. I am shameless in re-using a plastic throw-away bottle (left behind by someone else) to carry tap water for convenience.
Thanks
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