Water risks ripple through the beverage industry
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 16, 2009 at 8:12 amFrom Reuters News:
At New York’s Del Posto, diners can share a $130 entree of wild branzino fish with roasted fennel and peperonata concentrato and a $3,600 bottle of Dom Perignon. They cannot share a bottle of Perrier or San Pellegrino water.
The Italian restaurant backed by celebrities Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich is one of several shunning bottled water, along with the city of San Francisco and New York state.
“The argument for local water is compelling and obvious,” said Bastianich, who is phasing out bottled water across his restaurant empire, which stretches to Los Angeles. “It’s about transportation, packaging, the absurdity of moving water all over the world,” he said.
As environmental worries cut into sales from traditionally lucrative bottled water, beverage companies such as Coca-Cola (KO.N), PepsiCo (PEP.N), Nestle (NESN.VX) and SABMiller (SAB.L) are becoming more attuned to the risks of negative consumer environmental perceptions. Water is becoming scarcer, raising a fear that so-far manageable price increases could spike and leading drink companies to take action to maintain access to water and fight their image as water hogs.
Read the full text of this article from Reuters News by clicking here. For a related Factbox story on steps beverage companies are taking to lessen their water footprint, click here.
Campaign stresses water over liquid sugar shockers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 4, 2009 at 2:50 pmFrom the Long Beach Press Telegram:
Drink more water, preferably from the tap. That’s the message being delivered this summer by a variety of California public health and social service organizations.
In the Inland Empire, the Desert Sierra Health Network has launched its “Be Sugar Savvy” campaign, which includes the dissemination of details on the hidden amounts of sugar in foods and beverages that many think are healthy choices - or at least reasonably good choices.
This group, representing San Bernardino, Riverside and Inyo counties, is comprised of state, county and city government groups, school districts, private nonprofits and business organizations.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles County has kicked off a campaign for a “Soda Free Summer,” training county workers and others who assist low-income residents to get out the message that “fizzy and fun” can add weight and hurt calcium absorption, said Suzanne Bogert, a registered dietician with the Los Angeles County Health Department Nutrition Program.
Read more from the Long Beach Press Telegram by clicking here.
Merced’s water bottled by Safeway, resold at a profit
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 1, 2009 at 6:10 amFrom the Merced Sun-Star:
Wells are drying up across the county from an overtaxed and sinking water table. Drought and climate change threaten the future of local water supplies. And Merced has been selling its tap water since 2002 to a water bottling plant, which then sells that water at rates far above what it costs the plant to buy it from the city.
The Safeway Inc.’s water bottling plant in Merced — one of the top five commercial/industrial water users in the city, which bottles Safeway’s in-house purified and spring water brand Refreshe — uses roughly 50,000 gallons a day, five days a week, for its bottling operation.
The plant, which provides most Refreshe drinking and spring water to Safeway stores in the state, filters city water, puts it in bottles and sells it as purified water. The bottles note that the water was bottled in Merced, but not that it was pumped out of the ground by the city. (Refreshe spring water is shipped in from a spring and then bottled in Merced.)
Some say the operation is just like any other business that buys water from the city.
But others claim it represents a troubling trend. Environmentalists and water rights activists contend that the increasing commercialization of public water and the selling of tap water not labeled as such isn’t how water pumped out of the ground by cities is meant to be used. They claim that bottled water sells itself as safer and healthier than tap water, but in many cases is not.
Read more from the Merced Sun-Star by clicking here.
Peter Gleick: We need a “local water” movement
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 27, 2009 at 7:29 amFrom Peter Gleick’s City Brights Blog:
More and more restaurateurs are shifting to encourage healthy foods and sustainable agriculture grown nearby - a campaign many call “local food.” It is time to launch what I’ll call a “local water” campaign to encourage consumers to turn away from bottled water and back toward local sources of supply.
Bottled water is convenient. And we’re increasingly being told to fear our tap water. But there is a serious cost to bottled water, both economically and environmentally. Economically, bottled water is a thousand times more expensive than tap water (if you pay around $1 per cubic meter at home, or around $1000 an acre-foot, which as my previous post showed was not unusual, and $1 for a liter of bottled water, also not unusual).
Environmentally, bottled water has many costs, from the energy cost of making the bottle and producing the final product, to the cost of transporting it, to the costs of disposing (one way or another) of the billions of bottles we drink in the U.S. every year. That leads to today’s Water Number…
…. which you can find out by reading the rest of Peter’s post by clicking here.
Peter Gleick: The power of information and action
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 9, 2009 at 6:38 amFrom Peter Gleick’s City Brights Blog:
It is so easy to become disheartened by our water problems and the potential to solve them. Despite working on water for more than two decades, however, I still find myself to be mostly optimistic. I’m not sure why–the numbers (such as the two from my first two posts) certainly point to serious and unresolved water problems and the human suffering that accompanies them.
But I guess it is the silver linings–the small signs of progress–that continue to keep my spirits up. In this light, let me offer a small sign of progress, in a small area of water, that suggests that efforts to understand, communicate, and act to improve water problems can and do make an impact.
Water Number: The total sales of bottled water in the United States in 2008 actually declined by around 75 million liters (20 million gallons) from 2007, according to preliminary data from the Beverage Marketing Corporation.
Read more of this post by Peter Gleick on his blog by clicking here.
Nestle gets 10,000 messages in a bottle
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 25, 2009 at 7:12 amFrom YubaNet.com:
The following was released by Corporate Accountability International:
While Nestle executives put on a good show of the corporation’s green and good neighbor initiatives in Switzerland, communities sent out an SOS from the corporation’s headquarters for its bottling operations in North America. Leaders from communities near Nestle bottling sites, and the national Think Outside the Bottle campaign that works with them, delivered 10,000 messages in a bottle calling on Nestle to stop undermining local control of water.
Nestle is currently involved in water bottling disputes with communities in six states and Canada. From outside the shareholders’ meeting the picture is an unpleasant one for the bottling giant:
Another run at McCloud. Nestle recently announced plans to make another run at bottling water near Mt. Shasta in California, despite years of local resistance.
Read more from YubaNet.com by clicking here.
Nestle asked to stop fooling with community water supplies; Nestle making yet another pass at Mt. Shasta water; annual shareholders’ meeting April 23rd
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 17, 2009 at 8:12 amFrom YubaNet.com:
In the lead-up to Nestle’s annual shareholders’ meeting this April 23rd, a storm is gathering around the business practices of the world’s largest water bottler. Communities across the country have long been engaged in struggles with the bottling giant over control of local water resources. Now many of these struggles are coming to a head and a national campaign called Think Outside the Bottle is using April Fools Day to call on the corporation to, “stop fooling with community water supplies.”
“For years Nestle employed a range of tactics to wrest water rights from rural communities and downstream users, keeping its abuses out of sight and out of mind to the public,” said Deborah Lapidus, campaigns director for Corporate Accountability International. “Well, affected communities have now made it clear there is a pattern that needs to stop.”
To begin bottling in communities, Nestle has been engaged in everything from costly public relations campaigns and legal challenges to backroom deals for water rights. For example:
Public relations to pump. This year, several Maine communities passed ordinances to protect community water rights. Their victory was significant, given that just a few years earlier, Nestle pumped more than $200,000 to front groups that successfully attacked and defeated similar, statewide measures in the media.
Read more from YubaNet.com by clicking here.
Pacific students campaign against bottled water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 2, 2009 at 5:46 amFrom Stockton’s Record:
Several hundred University of the Pacific students this week are pledging to give up bottled water, and a taste-test experiment on Wednesday may have converted even more to the cause.
During the noon hour, clusters of students outside the University Center were tasked with correctly judging which of three pitchers marked “A,” “B” and “C” contained bottled water, filtered water, or tap water.
For many, it was guesswork. They sipped thoughtfully, cast blank looks at their friends and finally scribbled their evaluations on slips of paper. Brandon Wong seemed confident. “I thought pitcher ‘A’ had a very distinct bottled water taste,” he said. To which his buddy, Alex Bae, turned and said, “I thought it was pitcher ‘B.’ ” They laughed. “Clearly, we have no idea,” Bae said.
Student organizers fear their friends have no idea of the environmental consequences of bottled water, including the millions of gallons of oil needed to produce the bottles, pollution from transporting them, and the waste that results if bottles aren’t properly recycled.
Read more from The Record by clicking here.
Out West, a new kind of water war: Nestle wants to tap an aquifer in Colorado for bottled water. Many residents are angered by the project. ‘They’re taking and not giving,’ one critic says.
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 2, 2009 at 5:20 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
Reporting from Denver — In rural Chaffee County, Colo., one of the world’s largest beverage companies has discovered water it deems fit for a bottle: clean and crisp, with the mountain spring flavor people are willing to pay for.
Nestle Waters North America wants to tap an aquifer feeding a pair of springs near Salida southwest of Colorado Springs and draw 65 million gallons of water per year to bottle and sell under its Arrowhead brand.
But many mountain residents say Nestle should go bottle someone else’s water. “I’m afraid they will pump and pump until they suck it dry,” said Michele Riggio, a Salida physical therapist who has led the opposition.
The conflict is the latest skirmish in an ongoing battle against the bottled water industry, which has enjoyed strong growth over the last decade thanks to the beverage’s popularity among consumers who eschew tap water and soft drinks.
As companies like Nestle, which operates 50 spring sites around the country, seek to acquire new water sources, communities have increasingly resisted, said Noah Hall, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and an expert in water law.
“By the nature of its business — taking water out of the ground and putting it in a bottle and selling it — Nestle is a lightning rod for opposition wherever they go,” Hall said, citing conflicts in Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, Washington and California.
Read more from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Setting sail on sea of disposable plastic
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 4, 2009 at 6:11 amFrom the San Francisco Chronicle:
A handful of young men and women are constructing one of the strangest vessels ever seen on the San Francisco waterfront - a fantastic plastic catamaran made of cast-off plastic bottles filled with dry ice.
When it is finished, sometime next month, the boat, a 60-foot catamaran named Plastiki, will sail out the Golden Gate bound across the Pacific for Australia, a voyage that will be either an absolute disaster or a huge sensation.
The mastermind of the project is David de Rothschild, a 30-year-old sometime polar explorer and all-around adventurer who is the scion of the famous British Rothschild banking family.
De Rothschild, a tall, lanky man with a wispy beard and intense eyes, will be accompanied by a crew of sailors, adventurers and creative people, and individuals he calls “thought leaders.” The idea is to use the adventure to attract attention to plastic bottles, which he says are a symbol of waste in the world.
He held a two-liter water or soft drink bottle in his hand during a tour of the embryonic boat at Pier 31 on San Francisco’s northern waterfront Monday. “This,” he said, glancing at the clear bottle, “is a dumb product.”
He tossed it aside, into a bin with other bottles that will be used to float his boat.
The article doesn’t mention why the bottles are filled with dry ice …. Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
Bottled tap water: They’re drinking it up in New York at $1.50 a bottle!
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 27, 2009 at 5:46 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
Two teachers on their lunch break scanned a refrigerated shelf inside a Manhattan coffee shop lined with drink bottles: Naked Juice, Perrier, Smartwater, New York City tap water.
“Tap water?” said Alison Szeli, 26, picking up the clear plastic bottle with orange letters: “Tap’d NY. Purified New York City tap water.” She studied the description: “No glaciers were harmed in making this water.” She compared prices: Smartwater cost $1.85. Tap’d NY was 35 cents less.
Szeli and her co-worker went for tap, carrying the bottles to the cash register. “It’s cheaper,” Szeli said. “Water is all the same anyway. I just prefer to buy my own water in bottles.”
A few feet away, a scruffy-haired 29-year-old in jeans and a striped shirt delivered a shipment of Tap’d NY out of a rented Scion. Craig Zucker, founder of Tap’d NY, stopped unloading long enough to notice the two customers buying his brand. He smiled.
In the five months since he started the company, he has proved his hunch: People are willing to pay for New York City tap water, and not just in monthly utility bills.
“It doesn’t require energy or pumping,” Zucker said, “and it’s so pure and clean.”
It is, after all, one of the nation’s healthiest water supplies — so fresh that in 2007 the Environmental Protection Agency said it did not need filtration. New York pizza and bagel makers have long credited local water as a special baking ingredient. It goes down soft, without hints of tart-tasting minerals or chlorine like other public water systems.
I’m thinking … reusable bottles, people …. Read more about this insanity by clicking here.
Bottled water use 2000 times more energy intensive than tap, says new research from Pacific Institute
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 26, 2009 at 7:27 amFrom the Pacific Institute, this press release:
In a newly published article in the February 2009 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters, the Pacific Institute estimates that the annual consumption of bottled water in the U.S. in 2007 required the equivalent of between 32 and 54 million barrels of oil—roughly one-third of a percent of total U.S. primary energy consumption.
The article, “Energy implications of bottled water” by researchers Peter H. Gleick and Heather Cooley, is the first peer-reviewed analysis of its kind. Gleick and Cooley find bottled water is up to 2000 times more energy-intensive than tap water. Similarly, bottled water that requires long-distance transport is far more energy-intensive than bottled water produced and distributed locally.
“As bottled water use continues to expand around the world, there is growing interest in the environmental, economic, and social implications of that use, including concerns about waste generation, proper use of groundwater, hydrologic effects on local surface and groundwater, economic costs, and more. But a key concern is how much energy is required to produce and use bottled water,” said article co-author Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute. “It turns out the answer is, a lot.”
The authors note that a single estimate of the energy footprint of bottled water is not possible due to differences among water sources, bottling processes, transportation costs, and other factors. Gleick and Cooley calculate the energy requirements for various stages in bottled water production, including the energy to manufacture the plastic bottles, process the water and the bottles, and transport and cool the final product.
Combining the energy intensities for these stages, the analysis finds that producing bottled water requires between 5.6 and 10.2MJ per liter—as much as 2000 times the energy cost of producing tap water. The authors further estimate that to satisfy global demands, the energy equivalent of 50 million barrels of oil per year is used just to produce the bottles, primarily made of PET plastic, almost all of which are currently made from virgin, not recycled, material.
For water transported short distances, the energy requirements of bottled water are dominated by the energy to produce these plastic bottles. Long-distance transport, however, can lead to energy costs comparable to, or even higher than, the energy to produce the bottle. In the article, the authors calculate the energy costs of three different scenarios for a bottle of water consumed in Southern California—a locally produced bottle and bottled water from both France and Fiji transported to the region.
“With the U.S. consumption of bottled water exceeding 33 billion liters a year, and with intensifying efforts to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, these data should help identify ways to reduce the energy costs of bottled water and may help consumers themselves make more environmentally sustainable choices,” said co-author Heather Cooley, senior research associate at the Pacific Institute.
Based in Oakland, California, the Pacific Institute is a nonpartisan research institute that works to create a healthier planet and sustainable communities. Through interdisciplinary research and partnering with stakeholders, the Institute produces solutions that advance environmental protection, economic development, and social equity—in California, nationally, and internationally. www.pacinst.org.
Find the article “Energy Implications of Bottled Water” here:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/4/1/014009/erl9_1_014009.pdf?request-id=d0739ab7-2e80-421f-a56a-89d0e696399b
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.
Bottled Water: our guilty pleasure and it’s impact on the environment
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 16, 2007 at 9:01 amFrom the San Jose Mercury News:
Drinking a bottle of water might seem innocent enough, but each bottle has a downside many people overlook - a contribution to global warming. That’s because bottles create carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, when they are made, trucked to a store and disposed of in a landfill or recycled. Their impact can quickly add up.
“Bottled water is an energy-intensive luxury for Americans,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, an environmental think tank in Oakland. “It’s certainly much less necessary than the other things we use energy for.”
Last year, Americans consumed 8.3 billion gallons of bottled water, or the equivalent of 27.6 gallons a person, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp., a New York-based market research firm. Just making the bottles to hold all the water produced more than 2.5 million tons of CO, the Pacific Institute calculates.
According to an analysis by the Mercury News, the energy required to manufacture a single plastic liter bottle, fill it with water from a spring in the Sierra Nevada, truck it to San Jose and then bury it in a landfill creates 0.23 pounds of CO. That’s about as much as an average car emits driving a quarter of a mile. A liter bottle shipped from France and taken by rail across the United States creates more than twice as much CO.
For the $11 billion bottled water industry, global warming has brought unwanted attention. Some cities are moving to restrict bottled water, and the industry is countering with efforts to become more environmentally friendly.
San Francisco made a widely publicized decision earlier this year to ban bottled water in city offices, and communities such as Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and Ann Arbor, Mich., have taken steps to cut its use. San Jose is discussing its own ban. “Bottled water is a kind of cause du jour,” said Stephen Kay, spokesman for the International Bottled Water Association, an Alexandria, Va., trade association. “It is the poster child.”
But bottled water is just one of thousands of bottled and canned food and beverage products that are produced and transported to supermarkets and convenience stores. Many of those other products have a greater climate impact than bottled water because they require more processing or farming.
With water, “you’re choosing a bottle with the least environmental footprint,” said Jane Lazgin, a spokeswoman at Nestle Waters North America, the nation’s largest bottled water supplier.
To read the full text of this story from the San Jose Mercury News, click here.
House subcommittee to look at bottled water issues today - webcast available
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 12, 2007 at 7:05 amFrom EarthTimes.Org:
Today a House subcommittee will look at the environmental impact of water bottling and extraction on communities across the country. Chair of the House Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), is convening the hearing in response to the concerns of citizen groups from New Hampshire to California. Groups speaking at the hearing are currently challenging the aggressive lobbying and public relations efforts of corporations like Nestle, who bottle water (or intend to bottle water) in or near their communities.
The hearing is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. at 2154 in the Rayburn House Office Building. Professors from Michigan and Wayne State will speak to the environmental hazards of bottling. Speakers will also include representatives from Nestle Waters North America and the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA).
Environmental and social concerns over the bottling of water have compelled Illinois and cities nationwide to cancel bottled water contracts, California to require new health and safety labeling, and the U.S. Conference Mayors to look at the waste stream of plastic bottles. This hearing however, marks the first time in recent years that community concerns about water bottling have reached the national stage.
The subcommittee will be looking at how water bottling plants impact communities, the effect of extraction on watersheds and wetlands, and the adequacy of national and state laws in addressing these issues.
A webcast of the hearing will be available at http://domesticpolicy.oversight.house.gov/.
More on the Nestle water bottling plant, proposed for McCloud
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 20, 2007 at 4:52 pmSince I posted the press release yesterday from the citizens group, I feel obligated to post this story. More on the Nestle bottling plant proposed for McCloud. as reported in Redding’s Searchlight:
One report warns a “super-size” water bottling plant would zap McCloud jobs and shortchange the small town for its precious natural resource. Another report highlights the hundreds of jobs and $23 million income the same bottling plant would nurture in Siskiyou County. The conflicting reports, both released Monday, discuss Nestle Waters North America’s plans and potential economic impact.
The world’s largest water bottling company hopes to build a 1-million-square-foot plant in McCloud, a former lumber mill town. An environmental impact report on the project is expected to be recirculated this spring.
Eugene, Ore.-based ECONorthwest, which conducts economic analysis of public policy, composed its report on behalf of the McCloud Watershed Council. It concluded Nestle would buy water too cheaply from the McCloud Community Services District, council board member Debra Anderson said. Under contract, Nestle would purchase water from the district for $26.40 per acre foot — well below a 2004 state average for lease rates of $80 per acre-foot. “When the logging companies were here … they would not have given away or sold a board foot for mere pennies,” Anderson said Monday.
Nestle project manager Dave Palais said the $26.40 price doesn’t include the $100,000 a year it will pay into its Community Enhancement Program or its “exclusivity payment,” made to the district to prevent it from selling to a competing water bottler. That payment starts at $150,000 a year and grows to $250,000 by the plant’s 10th year, Palais said. Adding in those contributions brings the acre-foot price to at least $187, Palais said. They are part of its contract and were kept separate from the water payment at the services district’s request, he said. That allows the district to spend money on a variety of needs rather than just water service improvements.
To read the full text of this article from the Redding Searchlight, click here.
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