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Ten Concerns about Bottled Water
Excerpted from Inside the Bottle – an
Expose of the Bottled Water Industry
by Tony Clarke
A Polaris Institute Report
2005
- Price Gouging – what kind of price mark-ups do we find
in the bottled water market? Single serving bottles of water
range in price from $1.00 to $1.75 U.S. By contrast the same amount
of tap water costs a fraction of this price. The U.S. Natural
resources Defense Council has estimated that bottled water is
between 240 and 10,000 times more expensive than tap water. For
Coca-Cola or Pepsi, who draw the water for their products directly
from municipal taps, this price mark-up is astonishing. But it
is even more shocking in the case of Danone or Nestle because
they pay little or nothing for the water they take out of groundwater
streams and aquifers.
- Water Takings – when the label on the bottle says ‘pure
spring water’, where does the water really come from, who
owns it, and how is it regulated? In the U.S., bottled water
companies are not required by law to disclose the source and geographical
location of their water takings on their labels. In Canada they
are, but only for takings from underground water. Water takings
are also largely unregulated in both countries where there are
more laws governing surface waters than there are for groundwater.
Where groundwater regulations do exist, they differ, often dramatically
from state-to-state and from province-to-province. As a result
of the lax regulatory environment, bottled water labels are often
very misleading.
- Transforming Water – what kinds of filtering a processing
methods to companies use to turn ‘real’ water into
bottled water? What’s the difference between bottled
water and tap water? The Big-4 bottled water companies imply their
elaborate ‘proprietary’ treatment processes are the
justification for the higher cost of their products. Yet, unlike
other raw materials such as timber, minerals, oil, and gas, which
are transformed into identifiably new products, bottled water
is simply water transformed into water. The industry’s treatment
processes do not guarantee that bottled water is safer than tap
water; in fact, a number of studies have demonstrated that bottled
water is often less safe than tap water. Consider that one treatment
process uses bromate, which is considered to be a carcinogen.
- Contaminating Water – what evidence is there to support
the industry’s claim that bottled water is superior to tap
water? The International Bottled Water Association proclaims
that bottled water is superior to tap water. Yet several peer-reviewed
scientific studies have found disturbing concentrations of toxic
ingredients such as arsenic and mercury in their bottled water
samplings. When Coca-Cola launched its Dasani product in the UK
in March 2004, it had to withdraw nearly half a million bottles
due to bromate contamination. Bottling plants face inspections
only once every 3-to-6 years depending on the country and regulations
governing tap water are often stricter than those governing bottled
water.
- Marketing Schemes – what kinds of marketing and advertising
schemes are used by companies to sell what is really ‘water
transformed into water’? The tagline for Pepsi’s
Aquafina says it all: “So pure we promise nothing.”
Through relentless advertising, the Big-4 companies have turned
bottled water into “America’s most affordable status
symbol”. Using images that evoke ‘activity’,
‘health’, ‘relaxation’, ‘pureness’
and ‘replenishment’, the bottled water giants dupe
consumers into buying something that largely exists in an imaginary
environment. Industry slogans like ‘get hydrated or die’
expose internal corporation contradictions such as the fact that
the same companies that sell dehydrating soft drinks are promoting
bottled water as a solution to dehydration.
- Eco-threatening – what environmental damage is caused
by the escalating use and disposal of plastic bottles? Bottled
water containers labelled with images of pristine natural environments
are rapidly becoming a major threat to the environment and to
our health. These containers release highly dangerous toxic chemicals
and contaminants into the air and water when they are manufactured,
and again when they are burned or buried. Yet these same plastic
packages are becoming the fastest-growing form of municipal solid
waste in the U.S. and Canada.
- Recycling Record – what is the track record of the
Big-4 when it comes to recycling? Recycling rates for plastic
bottles has been in steady decline since 1995, despite the explosion
in plastic-bottle use. Not only has the industry promoted the
shift from glass to plastic containers, and failed to live up
to the promises about using more recycled materials in their containers,
they actively oppose legislation aimed at improving recycling
rates for plastic bottles, and requiring beverage container deposits.
More sinister still is their use of a deceptive logo on their
products that misleads consumers into thinking the product can
be recycled, when the opposite is often true.
- Manipulating Consumers – why are people turning from
tap water to bottled water? What’s really fuelling the new
bottled water culture? Ten years ago, most people relied on
their municipal system for all their drinking water. Today close
to one-fifth of the population in Canada and the U.S. drinks bottled
water exclusively – demonstrating how extraordinarily successful
the industry has been in luring people away from tap water. The
industry is surgical in its targeting of the young, the affluent,
the athletic, and the hip. It capitalises on North America’s
fear and fashion factors to convince consumers to purchase its
products.
- School Contracting – what marketing devices have the
bottled water companies used in cash-strapped schools, colleges,
and universities? Across the U.S. and Canada, there is now
a growing number of kindergarten to grade 12 schools, universities,
and colleges that have signed contracts with Pepsi or Coca-Cola.
‘Exclusive beverage contracts’ give these companies
long-term high profit access to students in captive environments.
Skilful management of these exclusivity contracts turn students
into life-long consumers of their products. Resistance to the
deals or competition is made nearly futile under secretive contracts
that are cloaked from public scrutiny.
- Water Privatising – what role and impact does the
bottled water industry have on the privatization of public water
utilities in the U.S. and Canada? The world’s largest
for-profit water service corporations have set their sights on
North America: Suez and Vivendi (now Veolia) from France and RWE-Thames
from Germany are eager to deliver privatized water services, and
companies like these are targeting the home/office bottled water
market. The bottled water industry’s marketing of ‘safe,
clean water’ undermines citizen’s confidence in public
water systems, and paves the way for the water companies to take
over under funded public utilities. In return, public willingness
to pay premium prices for bottled water enables water service
corporations to establish top dollar price.
The Polaris Institute, 312 Cooper St., Ottawa, On, Canada K2P 0G7
tel. 613-237-1717 fax 613-237-3359
E-mail:
polaris
Web-site: www.polarisinstitute.org
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