Protect Our Waters speaks on Nestle/McCloud bottling plant issue
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 13, 2008 at 5:55 amFrom Mt. Shasta Area Newspapers:
The issue of the proposed Nestle water bottling plant in McCloud has undergone many changes over its five year history, but what has not changed is that it is perhaps the single most contentious issue in the county.
In the following interview, Debra Anderson, president of McCloud Watershed Council, and Curtis Knight, California Trout Mount Shasta Area Program Manager, answer questions about their umbrella organization – the Protect Our Waters Coalition – and what the past years dealing with the Nestle issue in McCloud have been like from their point of view. Anderson and Knight answer some of the questions individually, and some jointly on behalf of Protect Our Waters.
Q: What is Protect Our Waters?
Debra Anderson and Curtis Knight: Protect Our Waters Coalition (www.protectourwaters.org) formed to protect the ecological and hydrological integrity of Mount Shasta’s headwaters areas. Water in California is an important issue, and the Nestle issue was a catalyst that made us realize that we needed to learn more about our watersheds so we could develop policies to protect our waters that are based on sound science.
Read more of this interview from Mt. Shasta Area Newspapers by clicking here.
Issue: Getting Nestlé Waters’ Green Story Out; With the bottled water industry under fire, Nestlé Waters North America needed to communicate about the company’s green initiatives
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 10, 2008 at 5:46 amFrom Business Week:
What do you do when you’re a company that believes it’s always been environmentally responsible and yet environmentalists are calling for you to step up your actions and play a greater role in sustainability? And what do you do when you reach the limit with your most visible effort? Those are the challenges facing Nestlé Waters North America, best known for its Poland Spring brand of bottled water.
“Being environmentally responsible is part of our DNA and has been in the 30 years that I’ve been with the company,” contends CEO Kim Jeffery. “Obviously, protecting the source of our product is important to us. We wouldn’t have a long-term business otherwise.”
He concedes, though, that for many years the company never felt a need to tout its environmental bona fides, and that the company found itself having to rethink that strategy. The light bulb moment came on what Jeffery describes as a sleepless night a couple of years ago when Wal-Mart (WMT) announced its plans to “go green.” “They were talking about what they were going to do, and when I thought about it, I could name 10 things that we had done [along the lines of going green] but no one knew about them.” Among those efforts: continually working with vendors to reduce the plastic content of its Poland Spring, Deer Park, and other spring water brand bottles, building LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) factories, and working collaboratively to seek comprehensive recycling solutions.
Read more from Business Week by clicking here.
Some bottled water toxicity shown to exceed law
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 15, 2008 at 6:12 amFrom the San Francisco Chronicle:
Bottled water brands do not always maintain the consistency of quality touted in ads featuring alpine peaks and crystalline lakes and, in some cases, contain toxic byproducts that exceed state safety standards, tests show.
The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization with offices in Oakland, tested 10 brands of bottled water and found that Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Choice contained chemical levels that exceeded legal limits in California and the voluntary standards adopted by the industry. The tests discovered an average of eight contaminants in each brand. Four brands besides Wal-Mart’s also were contaminated with bacteria.
The environmental group filed a notice of intent to sue Wal-Mart Tuesday, alleging that the mega-chain failed to warn the public of illegal concentrations of trihalomethanes, which are cancer-causing chemicals.
“The investigation has uncovered that consumers cannot be assured of the quality of their bottled water,” said Olga Naidenko, a toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group and lead author of the bottled-water study.
Wal-Mart disputed the findings and responded:
“Both our suppliers’ tests and tests from an additional external laboratory are not showing any reportable amounts of chlorine or chlorine byproducts. We’re disappointed that the EWG has not shared more details with us as we continue to investigate this matter,” Frederick said. “We’re puzzled by the EWG’s findings.”
Read more on this story from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
Bottled water versus tap: Which is safer to drink?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 11, 2008 at 6:54 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
Those ubiquitous plastic water bottles have been increasingly vilified in recent years. Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Barbara, among others, have banned them from purchase with city funds. A few trendsetting restaurants, and even some markets and hotels, have banned them too. The trend has left many consumers wondering: Isn’t bottled safer than tap?
“Bottled water isn’t any safer or purer than what comes out of the tap,” says Dr. Sarah Janssen, science fellow with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, which conducted an extensive analysis of bottled water back in 1999. “In fact, it’s less well-regulated, and you’re more likely to know what’s in tap water.”
Bottled and tap water come from essentially the same sources: lakes, springs and aquifers, to list a few. In fact, a significant fraction of the bottled water products on store shelves are tap water — albeit filtered and treated with extra steps to improve taste.
It’s not news to anyone that tap water can taste funky (too much chlorine, usually) or look discolored (from air bubbles or rust in pipes). But generally, that doesn’t mean it isn’t safe to drink, says Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for water with the Environmental Protection Agency. The great majority of the tap water in the country meets the EPA’s drinking-water standards, which regulate the levels of roughly 90 different contaminants, including germs such as giardia, heavy metals such as lead and dozens of industrial chemicals.
Read more from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Veto washes out key California water bill
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 3, 2008 at 1:35 pmFrom the California Progress Report, this commentary by Mark Schlosberg, California director of the Food and Water Watch:
With California in the midst of a drought and many communities experiencing water rationing, it is increasingly important for our elected officials to take concrete steps to ensure the continued vitality of our water resources. In this context, Governor Schwarzenegger’s recent veto of AB 2275 (Fuentes, D-Los Angeles) is particularly disturbing.
AB 2275, which passed the legislature with broad support, was a simple and straightforward piece of legislation. It would have merely required the public disclosure of how much California water is being bottled by water bottling companies. This information is important for policy makers at the state and local level to evaluate the impact of bottling operations on local water supplies and make decisions about how our precious water resources are allocated.
This is especially important in California, where there are more than 100 bottling facilities. While the amount of water that is bottled is small in relation to the total amount of fresh water used by Californians, the extraction of water for bottling can have dramatic effects on the local environment and particular watersheds.
Read more from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
20 Reasons You Should Stop Consuming Bottled Water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 29, 2008 at 8:41 amFrom the Web Design School Guide (?), an article on bottled water:
The growing consumption of bottled water has many people taking a closer look at the industry. The association between bottled water and good health is now being questioned, as well as the excessive garbage and costs that store-bought water accumulates. Below are 20 reasons you should stop consuming bottled water.
1. High Cost - You are not getting a good deal when you buy bottled water. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), bottled water can cost up to 10,000 times more per gallon than tap water. Some vending machines actually offer 12-ounce bottles of water next to cans of soft drinks, charging the same for each item. This is simply a waste of your money, as water if often available for free from many places.
2. Not Healthier Than Tap Water - Contrary to what marketers would have you believe, bottled water is not the healthy, pure alternative to tap water. Do not buy into this propaganda of fearing tap water, as it was placed in the public’s subconscious in order to sell more bottled water.
Read the rest of this article from the Web Design School Guide by clicking here.
California legislation would measure how much water is bottled
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 24, 2008 at 5:59 amFrom the San Francisco Chronicle, this commentary by Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes and Mark Schlosberg, director of the California Food and Water watch:
How much of California’s water is bottled? Legislation would let the public know.
California is in the midst of a drought and could be on the verge of a water crisis. The past spring was among the driest on record and experts are predicting that this upcoming winter season will be similarly dry. There have been various proposals offered to address this situation ranging from dams, canals, conservation and underground storage. While some of these proposals are highly controversial, the state should also take basic steps to understand how and where our water is being used.
Assembly Bill 2275 is a step in that direction. The legislation requires public disclosure of the source and volume of California’s water that is bottled every year. This information is crucial to help policymakers make responsible decisions about the ways in which our most precious resource should be allocated.
There are more than 100 bottled-water facilities operating in California. While each of these facilities report the amount of water extracted from groundwater sources to the state Department of Public Health, this information is neither compiled nor made available to local and state decision-makers who are responsible for water planning. This bill would allow them to have access to that information. The State Water Board, who is doing a full inventory of its water rights, is making a similar effort.
Read more of this commentary by the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
Bottled, bottled water everywhere…
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 19, 2008 at 5:52 amFrom the San Francisco Chronicle’s Village Green blog:
Admit it. You drink bottled water from time to time. You’ve mostly stopped buying flats of it from Costco or Trader Joe’s. But once in a while you’re on a road trip, and you didn’t bring along your Sigg bottle or some other receptacle you use to feel a bit less guilty about the bijillions of plastic water bottles you’ve consumed from and tossed into the recycling bin. And you’re filling up your car (a hybrid, of course!), and you are hot and thirsty and nothing else — coffee, Slurpee, apple juice — will slake your thirst. And there it is in the refrigerator case: cool and clear and gleaming.
Ok, enough set-up. People — policy makers, environmentalists, consumers — are getting more and more concerned about the ill effects of bottled water. There are the obvious ones: the energy, materials and waste associated with the bottles themselves. But there also is growing concern about the amount of water being poured into those containers (some estimates put it in the billions of gallons).
Enter AB 2275, introduced by Southern California assemblyman Felipe Fuentes. The bill would require water bottlers or private water sources to provide detailed information about the source of the water, whether it’s a public or private agency, an artesian well, lake, river, spring, etc. It would also require the company or source to detail the total volume of water bottled or sold for either wholesale or retail use.
Read more from the Village Green blog by clicking here.
Good news for conservation advocates - Nestle cancels contract for McCloud water bottling project
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 6, 2008 at 5:45 pmFrom the California Progress Report:
The Protect Our Waters Coalition (composed of the McCloud Watershed Council, California Trout, and Trout Unlimited) is pleased to learn that Nestlé Waters North America has agreed to cancel its contract with the McCloud Community Services District (District) to build a water bottling facility in the town of McCloud.
After ongoing concern among McCloud residents and conservationists about the plans for the Nestlé plant highlighted major flaws in the environmental review process for the facility, the company agreed to conduct additional scientific studies and to scale back the size of the proposed plant. In cancelling this contract with the District, Nestlé has taken a major step toward a more environmentally responsible project in the town. Nestlé still owns the land where a future plant could be located and all indications are that the company will pursue a new contract that is more responsive to concerns raised by residents.
Coalition member organizations remain apprehensive about the impact the plant would have on McCloud economically and on the environment, as highlighted recently by California Attorney General Jerry Brown in a public letter to the Siskiyou County Planning Department. Although the company has agreed to conduct additional scientific study, it has not yet committed to holding off on engaging in a new contract for a bottling plant until such study is complete.
Read the rest of this story from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
State Attorney General Brown warns: “Nestle will face swift legal challenge if it does not fully evaluate the environmental impact of diverting millions of gallons of spring water from the McCloud River into billions of plastic water bottles”
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 5, 2008 at 7:59 amFrom the Environment News Service:
The State of California will challenge the environmental plan for a bottled water plant that Nestle Waters North America intends to build in Siskiyou County if the company does not revise its contract to pump water from the McCloud River, says the state’s top lawyer.
“It takes massive quantities of oil to produce plastic water bottles and to ship them in diesel trucks across the United States,” said California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. “Nestle will face swift legal challenge if it does not fully evaluate the environmental impact of diverting millions of gallons of spring water from the McCloud River into billions of plastic water bottles,” Brown warned in a letter to the company July 28.
On the same day, the company issued a press release agreeing to a study and evaluation of the intended primary source of water for the project, Squaw Valley Creek, a tributary of the McCloud River.
Nestle has contracted with North State Resources to conduct the study, while scientists from the University of California-Berkeley and UC Davis will supply data and oversight of the evaluation. Data on the existing hydrology and biology of the Squaw Valley creek watershed will be used to develop baseline information to improve understanding of the watershed.
“Nestle Waters is committed to ensuring that our projects are consistent with the sustainability and long-term availability of water in the communities in which we are located,” said Nestle project manager Dave Palais.
Read more from the Environment News Service by clicking here.
Tap water has 1/100 impact of bottled water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 31, 2008 at 10:50 pmFrom AlterNet:
We have forgotten about our closest source of water at home - the tap. Yet one of the simplest ways to reduce our environmental impact, to save money (not a ton…yet!) and to free ourselves from shopping and storage hassle, is by saying goodbye to bottled water. A life cycle assessment commissioned by the Swiss Gas and Water Association traced the entire life cycle from water extraction to serving it up in a glass.
Their findings showed that tap water has less than one percent of the impacts of un-refrigerated bottled water. Even when the tap water is refrigerated its impact is only one quarter of that of bottled water. These astonishing figures show that tap water is hands-down the greenest and most responsible choice.
The biggest impacts for bottled water come from the refrigeration, packaging and transport. Refrigeration also substantially increased the impacts of the tap water scenarios thanks to the energy consumed to power the fridge. Returnable bottles and jugs had lesser overall impacts when the distances for their transport were short. But as the distances increase, the higher weight glass bottles resulted in an “on the whole” higher environmental impact as compared to the PET bottles.
Read more from AlterNet by clicking here.
Nestle scales back plans for McCloud bottled water plant
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 13, 2008 at 5:58 amFrom Business Week & the Associated Press:
Nestle SA said Monday it is significantly scaling back plans in Northern California to build what would have been the country’s largest water bottling plant. The announcement by Nestle Waters North America comes after years of opposition by environmentalists and a group of residents in the rural town of McCloud.
With soaring fuel and transportation costs, building a 1 million square foot facility at the base of Mount Shasta no longer makes economic sense, said David Palais, Nestle’s Northern California natural resource manager. The company also has built a plant in Denver and expanded other facilities in the West. Palais told The Associated Press that those expansions make a large plant in California less necessary.
Nestle signed a contract in 2003 with the McCloud Community Services District to pump up to 521 million gallons of water a year. In exchange, the Swiss food and drink company agreed to pay $250,000 to $350,000 a year to the town of McCloud, about 200 miles north of Sacramento.
Palais said the company now will seek permission to pump a fraction of that water and build a much smaller plant of about 350,000 square feet.
Read the full text of this article from Business Week by clicking here.
Water bottlers facing growing community opposition
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 9, 2008 at 12:21 pmFrom the Associated Press:
The lumber mill closed five years ago, and so many families moved out that the town can no longer even field a high school football team. But McCloud is hoping to turn things around by exploiting the other natural resource in abundance along the icy flanks of Mount Shasta — water.
The town of 1,300 people in far Northern California struck a deal with Nestle in 2003 under which the Swiss company would build the nation’s largest water bottling plant to tap three of the many springs on the mountainside and bottle up to 521 million gallons of water a year.
The project is still awaiting an environmental review from the county and could be several years away from approval, having run into opposition from scientists, fishermen, conservationists and some members of the community 280 miles northeast of San Francisco.
But others in town are growing frustrated by the delays and want to see something, anything, to replace the lumber mill that was driven out of business by the logging restrictions that have hurt the timber industry across the Pacific Northwest.
“When they had the mill, this town was jumping,” said homeowner Paula Kleinhans. “As soon as the mill closed down, people moved, they lost their jobs, and now there are no children here. It really needs industry here.”
Read the rest of this story from the Associated Press, which highlights the opposition water bottlers are facing in McCloud and throughout the U.S., by clicking here.
Bottled water’s sickening side effects: 86% of those single serve bottles are not recycled
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 4, 2008 at 5:50 amFrom Fox News:
Demand for bottled water is quite healthy. Consumers purchased nine trillion gallons of it last year in the U.S., according to the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), an environmental think tank. But it turns out there may be some sickening side effects. “There are a lot of negative feelings about bottled water now,” says Dr. Alex Mayer, a professor at Michigan Technological University and the director of the Michigan Tech Center for Water and Society, based in Houghton, Mich.
It costs a lot of money and energy to transport and store plastic water bottles, both of the single-use and water-cooler variety — even more so when you factor in how double-parked delivery trucks snarl traffic in cities and suburbs. “It’s mind-boggling how much gas and oil it takes to make single-serve plastic bottles,” says John Van Newenhizen, director of commercial product development at water-supplier Culligan International Corp., based in Rosemont, Ill. “It’s also mind-boggling how the bottles stay in a landfill.”
Many of the single-use water and soda bottles, made from polyethylene terephthalate or PETE, get recycled and end up in China being re-used to make clothing, carpets, PolarFleece and straps. “The Chinese are the biggest users of recycled plastic bottles,” says Peter H. Gleick, president of the Oakland, Calif.-based Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, author of “The World’s Water” and a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship for his work on water issues. “No one else comes close.”
Still, about 86 percent of water bottles in the U.S. are not recycled, according to the Washington, D.C.-based EPI. Thirty-eight billion bottles are plowed into landfills every year, according to Lindsay McKinley, a spokeswoman for PUR Water Filtration System, owned by the home products giant Procter & Gamble.
Read the rest of this article from Fox News by clicking here.
Town of McCloud divided on conflicting reports regarding Nestle bottling plant
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 3, 2008 at 4:26 amFor those of you following the McCloud Nestle bottling plant story, here’s an article from the Mt. Shasta News:
Since the Nestle Waters bottling plant contract was signed in 2003, many McCloud citizens feel the community has become divided into two separate groups: those who support the project and those who oppose it.
At the center of this divide are different economic reports that support each side’s claims and concerns. The divide was apparent during the March 24 regular meeting of the McCloud Community Services District, as nearly 50 citizens (representing both pro and con) packed Scout Hall to hear a presentation on the report released in October by ECONorthwest Consulting of Eugene, Ore.
Following the presentation by the McCloud Watershed Council, Nestle project manager Dave Palais argued against some of the report’s claims. Members of the McCloud Community Services District board of directors also spoke on the issue (see page A2).
The ECONorthwest report differs in many of its conclusions from independent reports done for Nestle by economists at the University of California Davis and California State University Chico.
Much more on this story from the Mount Shasta News by clicking here.
McCloud residents split over Nestle bottling plant
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 22, 2008 at 6:08 amFrom Red Orbit:
McCloud, a former lumber company town in the far north of California, has the charm of a small village and a breathtaking setting among pine and fir trees on the southern flank of Mount Shasta.
In 2003, the town government signed a contract to sell its spring water to Nestle Waters North America, a subsidiary of Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage company. Nearly one-third of bottled water sold in the United States in 2006 came from the 23 Nestle plants in the United States, earning the company $3.57 billion.
The Nestle deal has divided McCloud, a close-knit town of about 1,350 people. While some support it because they welcome economic development, others object to the lack of public input on the contract and the possible environmental effects. Almost five years after the contract was signed, construction of the plant has yet to begin.
“It’s the issue in town,” said Curtis Knight, the Mount Shasta area manager of California Trout, a wild fishery conservation group. “You know, who are you and are you pro-Nestle or are you anti- Nestle? It’s really been a wedge through town, and I think it’s unfortunate.”
Nestle’s water bottling operations earned it euro 6.3 billion, or $9.9 billion, worldwide in 2007, but they often stir controversy. Lawsuits against the company have been filed - and some won - in Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, California, Maine, and in Brazil. The debate in McCloud over the bottling contract is about method and content.
In December, Representative Dennis Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, was the chairman for the first of several House subcommittee hearings on water. He said bottling companies usually put plants “in rural areas, where people don’t necessarily have access to big law firms or the attention of the federal government to protect their economic interests.”
“There are always questions raised in terms of how these contracts are gained and whether people have informed consent,” he said.
Read the rest of this story from Red Orbit by clicking here.
Bottled Water World: one of the water testers from the Berkeley Springs water tasting competition tells her story
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 17, 2008 at 1:12 pmFrom The Smart Set at Drexel University:
When I was a youngster in Appalachia, my grandfather and I would sometimes go to the Black Valley Spring to fetch water. Granddad’s summer cottage had no plumbing. We made do with rain barrels, a couple of intermittent springs near the house, and extreme conservation methods that included an outhouse. It was never absolutely necessary to tote water from Black Valley Spring, but Granddad liked the taste of it. The spring stood on county land, and as we sank extra-large mayonnaise jars and ceramic jugs into its depths, he would say, “If this gusher was on someone’s private property, it would be worth a lot of money.”
Granddad was right on two counts: The consistent flow of straight-from-the-mountainside water, so clear you could see the minute ridges in the stones at its bottom, would have brought a private farmer a tidy extra income. And the water tasted wonderful. To me its cold perfection conjured up sensations of sweet cinnamon candy, of autumn mornings after an all-night rain, of silver bells and big drifts of fresh snow. Granddad and I agreed that Black Valley Spring must have the best-tasting water in the world.
From such humble childhood origins I have arisen to become an internationally-recognized water taster. Bottlers in exotic locales from Bosnia to Tasmania, from Saskatchewan to Daytona Beach, all look to me for corroboration that they produce the most delicious water on the planet. My carefully considered judgments, culminating in gold, silver, and bronze medals, can elevate an obscure spring source to prominence in the crowded, competitive, multi-billion-dollar bottled water business.
Sounds far-fetched? Well, yes and no. You be the judge.
Read the rest of this story from one of the testers at the recent Berkeley Springs water tasting competition by clicking here.
Stop drinking that bottled water, you mutton heads! says editorial
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 1, 2008 at 8:18 amFrom the Nova Scotian Chronicle Herald (from the Water Wired Blog):
TWO HUNDRED and sixty kilometres off the coast of Nova Scotia, Sable Island was once a graveyard of shipping. Today it is, among other things, a unique environmental monitoring platform, where universities and government agencies measure weather, the magnetic field of the Earth, and the quality and composition of the air and water. Among the pollutants the researchers encounter are pesticides banned since the 1960s but still circulating in the air, contaminants used only in China — and thousands of plastic water bottles.
Plastic water bottles?
Yep. If you want to do something for the environment, and also prove you are not a gullible mutton-head, then stop drinking bottled water — now.
The article points out that most bottled water comes from municipal sources, and sometimes contains extra contaminants that wouldn’t be present if simply drawn from the tap.
The environmental impact of the bottled-water ripoff is stunning. The U.S. produces 29 billion water bottles every year, using the equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil. The bottles are designed for one-time use, and shouldn’t be reused, because contaminants from the low-grade plastic may leach into the contents. Environmental groups estimate that only about 14 per cent of the bottles are recycled. More than 80 per cent of them end up in landfills, or in places like the beaches of Sable Island.
Once bottled, the product is shipped enormous distances to market, nearly 25 per cent of it travelling far enough to cross a national border before being sold. The Pacific Institute estimates that the energy used for pumping, processing, transportation, and refrigeration represents another 50 million-plus barrels of oil; equivalent to enough to run three million cars for a year.
The political implications are equally obnoxious. Private water promotion is a steady drumbeat of insinuation that public water supplies are inferior and dangerous, and that private supplies are safe and secure. Just like public schools versus private ones, or public transport versus private cars, or public health care versus private health care.
To read the full text of this opinion article from the Nova Scotian Chronicle Herald, click here.
Bottled water vs. tap water: in-depth story from Reader’s Digest
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 20, 2008 at 8:59 amHat tip to the Water Wired blog for this find! From Reader’s Digest:
Remember the drinking fountain, that once ubiquitous, and free, source of H2O? It seems quaint now. Instead, bottled water is everywhere, in offices, airplanes, stores, homes and restaurants across the country. We consumed over eight billion gallons of the stuff in 2006, a 10 percent increase from 2005. It’s refreshing, calorie-free, convenient to carry around, tastier than some tap water and a heck of a lot healthier than sugary sodas. But more and more, people are questioning whether the water, and the package it comes in, is safe, or at least safer than tap water—and if the convenience is worth the environmental impact.
Evocative names and labels depicting pastoral scenes have convinced us that the liquid is the purest drink around. “But no one should think that bottled water is better regulated, better protected or safer than tap,” says Eric Goldstein, co-director of the urban program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a nonprofit organization devoted to protecting health and the environment.
Yes, some bottled water comes from sparkling springs and other pristine sources. But more than 25 percent of it comes from a municipal supply. The water is treated, purified and sold to us, often at a thousandfold increase in price. Most people are surprised to learn that they’re drinking glorified tap water, but bottlers aren’t required to list the source on the label.
To read the rest of this story from Reader’s Digest, click here.
Bottled water vs. tap water: the battle continues but the tide is turning
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 17, 2008 at 5:55 pmFrom the Christian Science Monitor, (which I picked up from this WaterWired post):
For most of the past seven years, Kate Daniel was “a fiend for bottled water.” Believing that bottled water was healthier and better tasting, the Tufts University junior would carry along a bottle wherever she went. But after she failed to identify bottled water in a blindfolded taste test sponsored by a group called Think Outside the Bottle, Ms. Daniel’s confidence in bottled water faltered. “I felt slightly duped,” she says.
Even as bottled water companies continue to see increased sales, the recent raft of negative media coverage and activist campaigns against the industry has caused a product once seen as fundamentally green and healthy to lose some of its luster. Now, brand-name bottlers are scrambling to reposition their products by upping their green credentials to fend off further consumer backlash fermenting in churches, college campuses, and city halls across the country. “All big business is under siege, and at this point it would be remiss to not react to environmental concerns,” says Marian Salzman, an advertising executive with JWT Intelligence in New York.
By now, most Americans have heard reports that point to the amount of oil it takes to produce and transport bottled water, in addition to the masses of plastic bottles that are used once and not recycled. But most American consumers don’t seem to be changing their habits. Since 2002, the US market has seen an increase in bottled water production of more than 9 percent per year, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation. After soft drinks, water has been the second-largest commercial beverage by volume since 2003. Production for 2007 is projected to be more than 9 billion gallons, with revenues clocking in just under $12 billion.
Despite buoyant profits, critics say it is only a matter of time before the tide turns against the bottle. Meanwhile, a chorus of state and local governments, social justice groups, and college students are turning up the heat on Big Water.
To read the full text of this article from the Christian Science Monitor, click here. More commentary and resources from the WaterWired blog - click here.
Picture of bottles of water by flickr photographer seenyarita. Click on the picture to visit the flickr website and see more great photos.
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