WaterWired

Fight For Your Rights: Beastie Boy's Film Takes On Nestle, Privatization & Bottled Water

Thanks to friend and former student Amy Ewing for bringing this to my attention.

Beastie Boy Adam "MCA" Yauch, known for his activism and whose company distributes the film FLOW: For Love Of Water, defends his attack on Swiss firm Nestle in the film.

Read what Nestle says about bottled water.

You can see my previous posts about the film - 30 January 2008 and 29 February 2008.

From the story:

Yauch screened his documentary film FLOW at last weekend's (21 June 2008) U.S. Nantucket Film Festival, claiming the Swiss-based firm is being environmentally irresponsible.

The film, distributed by Yauch and his company Oscilloscope Pictures, blames the growing privatization of the world's fresh water supply partly on the company, and others including Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

A source tells the New York Post that Nestle bosses were furious at Yauch after hearing the company's name mentioned, revealing, "She (a company representative) stormed out about an hour in when the film named Nestle. The company obviously had no idea this content was in the movie. She told an audience member, 'That was one-sided,' on her way out and didn't come back for the question and answer session afterwards."

Yauch has refused to apologize for his honestly in the footage.

He tells the New York Post, "They (Nestle) put pretty pictures of springs and forests on the bottles, but in this movie they're getting called out. I think it's great. They lock down water as a commodity they can buy and sell. It's terrifying."

Yauch's film is set to debut in New York this September.

Maude Barlow would be proud of you, Adam!

“Everything starts out as a rebellion, then becomes a movement, and finally becomes a racket.” – Patrick Buchanan

NYT Reviews 'Bottlemania' and Royte's Interview on 'Marketplace'

Well, a book about bottled water has hit the big time: The Gray Lady has noticed.

The featured (front page) review in the New York Times Book Review of 15 June 2008 is Lisa Margonelli's review of Elizabeth Royte's Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It.

The drawing is by Oliver Munday from the NYTBR's cover.

I won't bore you with a review of the review.The book has been around for a while and blogged to death. Besides I have not read it yet.

Margonelli mentions one thing Royte believes: that to be anti-bottled water is now becoming fashionable, much the way to drink bottled water was. So Royte wonders if the pro-bottle and anti-bottle movements aren't cut from the same plastic:

“Is it fashion or is it a rising awareness of the bottle’s environmental toll that’s driving the backlash? I’m starting to think they’re the same thing.”

I'll close with a factoid you've probably heard: 

"The total energy required for every bottle’s production, transport and disposal is equivalent, on average, to filling that bottle a quarter of the way with oil."

Good review. I think I'll read the book.

Here's Kai Ryssdal's interview with Royte from Marketplace. You can listen to it or read it.

"...the biggest enemy is tap water." -- Quaker Oats CEO, talking to industry analysts about bottled water, 2000

Read This Book: 'Bottlemania' by Elizabeth Royte

Again, I'm running behind on things and still using my two weeks in the South Caucasus as an increasingly-lame excuse.My faux-bird flu seems to be waning.

I've heard much about Elizabeth Royte's book Bottlemania: How Water Webnt on Sale and Why We Bought It. Here is a review by Mark Coleman from the 1 June 2008 Los Angeles Times and a book excerpt from the 22 May 2008 Wall Street Journal.

Sounds like a great read, but I have not cracked it open it yet - still trying to read Jeff Sachs' most recent book so I can review his approach to solving the world's water problems (I'm working on it, John!).

Time to do some reading.

"Bozone: the invisible layer that surrounds stupid people and won't allow smart ideas to penetrate." -- Firesign Theater Newsgroup

Vermont Protects Its Ground Water: Violation of NAFTA?

Their New Hampshire neighbors might sneer that they are "quiche eaters" (Vermont does make some wonderful cheese) but when it comes to protecting ground water, the Green Mountain State folks don't want strangers to pump too much of their precious ground water.

Today's Christian Science Monitor has Tom A. Peter's story.

So the Vermont legislature just passed a bill that establishes a water permit system, which Gov. Jim Douglas (R) will likely sign. The law declares ground water to be a public trust and requires all enterprises pumping more than 57,600 gallons per day (40 gallons per minute) to obtain a permit. Most farms are exempt.

The amount allowed without a permit is not insignifcant - it's about about 65 acre-feet per year. That's actually a lot of water from a so-called "exempt" (exempt from a permit or water right) well. Here in Oregon, we allow an exempt well 15,000 gallons per day, which is a lot; Washington allows an exempt well to pump 5,000 gallons daily. New Mexico, much drier that OR, VT, or WA, allows 3 acre-feet per year or about 2,700 gallons per day,  < 2 gpm.

So let's say you pump 57,000 gallons per day; no permit is required. That's enough to bottle over 200,000 one-liter bottles of water daily (I am conveniently neglecting the water used in the process), or over 80 M bottles per year. That is not a huge bottling operation, but it's not small, either.

There could be a problem, though: Vermont's measure may violate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), since it could constitute a barrier to international trade. If a foreign company believes that its ability to conduct business is hindered by the law, then it can file a claim against the state under NAFTA.

One Canadian firm already pumps Vermont ground water and bottles it in New Hampshire for sales across the country. Other firms may be considering bottling operations. Again, Vermont has "cachet".

Some have warned that NAFTA would have this effect and compromise the ability of border states (or provinces) to manage/allocate their water. Vermont believes it will not be a problem, because all enterprises are treated the same; international firms are not singled out.

Alyssa Neir and I broached these NAFTA issues as they might develop along the USA-Mexico border.

But time will tell, and I suspect this'll get interesting.

Note added on 11 June 2008: Gov. Jim Douglas signed into law legislation declaring Vermont's ground water a public trust and establishing a permit system. Read more here. 

"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails." -- Bertha Calloway

Maude Barlow's and the Bottled Water Industry's Worst Nightmare

What could possibly cause massive heartburn for both Maude Barlow, the Canadian Crusader, and the bottled water industry? Infected, that's what.

Yes, the SciFi Channel managed to give both sleepless nights with its own made-for-TV (aka "straight to DVD") movie, Infected, a semi-decent flick about bad aliens who come to earth looking for human hosts to "grow" their slug-like babies (the adults are insect-like, but don human skin so as not to scare the locals).

Hmmm. Let me guess...the writers saw Alien.

So how do the aliens wreak havoc on humanity? Well, having monitored our media for a number of years, they know humans are real big suckers for bottled water. So they decide to enter the bottled water business, but they contaminate their water with an extraterrestrial amino acid to better prepare the humans, who also get a plague-like disease as a side effect. The company, Whitefield Industries, supplies the unsuspecting populace of Boston (with Montreal playing that role) with cheap (but not too cheap, else the humans won't drink it) bottled water (but none of that overpriced Fiji Water stuff).

If that's not bad enough, the slimy arthropods also grow cheap produce (the bugs also know humans are seduced by cheap but good food) with their contaminated bottled water, further spreading the nasty amino acid. This nefarious plot is discovered by a worker at the city's Water Resources Department, who soon is killed. Two newspaper reporters, former lovers but now on the outs, must team together to defeat the forces of evil (bottled water). They succeed after a bit.

A digression: SciFi movies have at least two things in common: 1) one or more has-been stars: 2) a  climactic scene in what looks to be the basement of an industrial facility, one with plenty of pipes, valves, cables, tanks with flammable fluids, etc. This one was no different. Judd Nelson and Isabella Rossellini (say it ain't so, Isabella!) lend their awesome talents to this flick. Both play aliens, but Nelson is a good one.

Isabella's big moment comes when her breasts explode and two insect-like appendages come flying out to "accost" our hero and heroine. Tears welled up in my eyes. She gets killed by the boss insect, Mr. Whitefield (real name: Zxykownh), soon after that.

So it's easy to see that bottled water's image is tarnished, but why would Maude be perturbed? PRIVATIZATION! We've got a private company supplying Boston with water, people! See what happens when you let private companies into the water business! Aliens and slugs!

And Maude, this is a Canadian movie!

"Nature bats last." -- bumper sticker, Corvallis, OR

Why Fiji Water Will Never Be 'Green'

I first encountered Fiji Water several years ago when I attended a conference held at a "resort" hotel. You know the type - kind of snooty, who have lately taken to levying a mandatory daily  "resort fee" to your bill so they can advertise lower room rates. But that's fodder for another post.

Anyway, in my room were several bottles of Fiji bottled water, with a note saying that if I preferred to drink this water, I would be charged $4 per bottle. My Scots ancestry came to the fore and I wondered why anyone would pay $4 for water when there was perfectly good tap water.  I was even more amazed when I discovered that Fiji was not just a moniker, but actually indicated the origin of the water.

Why would people have to drink water from Fiji, about 2,800 miles southwest of Honolulu, unless they lived in Fiji? Drinking bottled water in lieu of of perfectly good tap water is foolish enough, but bottled water from Fiji?

On NPR's The World earlier this week there was a piece on how Fiji Water is "going green", and will eventually become "carbon negative". The host interviewed a real lulu - "Fiji Water Girl" - who drinks nothing but Fiji bottled water and "can't live without it." Puhhh-leeze! She was ecstatic to hear that Fiji Water was "going green".

But the show's host also spoke with "Tap Water Girl", who correctly exclaimed, "It's creating a problem and then trying to fix a problem... as opposed to not creating a problem at all in the first place."

Fiji is now going "carbon negative"  in order to convince people that drinking expensive water from thousands of miles away is good for the planet. They are planting trees, using renewable energy sources, and rerouting their shipping routes so as to save energy and reduce carbon emissions. I applaud them (go to Fiji Green for more information). But can such an approach really produce a green product?

I have a problem with planting trees to offset carbon emissions. On a total "carbon emitted, carbon sequestered" basis, this no doubt can work, but what about the time factors? For example, if I purchase carbon credits for a plane flight to Europe, my carbon emissions occur in about half a day. But when does the carbon sequestration occur, and how long does it take for the trees to absorb the carbon my flight emitted? They do not do do so at the same time the flight occurs. And it's important to have the carbon sequestration happen as soon as possible relative to the carbon emission. If it takes 10 years for trees to sequester the carbon, how much additional global warming will have occurred because of my plane flight during those 10 years? And what happens when the trees die? The carbon is released as CO2.

If I am missing something, please enlighten me.

But there is another issue that transcends the "carbon negative" issue, one that Fiji can never address. Regardless of how "carbon negative" Fiji Water becomes, petroleum products are used to make and transport it.  Petroleum is far too valuable a substance to waste it on a product that we do not need and can obtain quite easily here at home. [Here's an article from today's New York Times about the environmental costs of shipping food around the world - thanks to Robert of Watercrunch]

And that, my children, is the reason why Fiji Water will never be green.

“Bottled water is a business that is fundamentally, inherently and inalterably unconscionable. No side deals to protect forests or combat global warming can offset that reality.” -- Michael J. Brune, executive director, Rainforest Action Network, New York Times, 7 November 2007

Water: H2O = Life; Aqua Colbert

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has an extraordinary exhibit Water: H2O = Life.

This special exhibit about water highlights the importance of the world's most precious resource. The exhibit includes hands-on activities and interactive displays to educate the public about water-where it comes from, how it shapes the planet and the lives of people, plants, and animals everywhere.

The Colbert Report even featured the exhibit on its 20 March 2008 show, along with Stephen Colbert's line of bottled water, Aqua Colbert. You can also find all these videos on Misublog.

"When you've got an extraordinary thirst, don't settle for an ordinary water that comes from just one foreign country. When you drink Aqua Colbert, you're drinking the world."

"Thirst locally, drink globally." -- Aqua Colbert's slogan

Bottled Water Humor

I swiped this from Robert at Watercrunch - I can't pass up a chance to take a poke at bottled water.

You can find more of Steve Greenberg's cartoons here.

Ethos Water - $3,200,000 per acre-foot.

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul." -- George Bernard Shaw

I (Heart) Tap Water - Student Video Competition

Food & Water Watch has announced a student competition: produce a 1 to 2 minute video proclaiming your love for tap water and post it to YouTube.

The contest ends at 11:59 AM EST on 14 April 2008. Winners will be announced on Earth Day - 22 April 2008.

Your video should be inspiring, entertaining, and with a clear message. Easy, right?

Your video must be an original creation with the following three elements:

• a declaration of your love for tap water;
• some discussion about bottled water consumption; and
• make the case for why your school or any campus should give up bottled water.

The winner will get $1,500, the second place finisher will get $500, and the third place finisher will get a "Take Back the Tap" gift bag.

The winning video will also be featured prominently on the Take Back the Tap
WWW site.

Please - "family-friendly" videos only (that eliminates me).

And while we are extolling the virtues of tap water, take a look at
Tappening.com.

"Differential equations are like deodorants; more people who don't use them should." -- Steve Wheatcraft

Congressional Call for GAO Probe into Bottled Water, TCE, Perchlorate

Reps. Albert R. Wynn (D-MD) and Hilda L. Solis (D-CA) have called for a GAO probe into the bottled water industry and TCE and perchlorate in drinking water. Wynn is Chair and Solis Vice Chair of the House Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials.

Wynn and Solis are raising concerns about the purity of bottled water, source labeling, the effects of the bottles on landfills, and the energy used in the production and transportation of bottled water. They also are concerned with EPA's effort, or lack thereof, to address the issue of TCE (trichloroethylene) and perchlorate in drinking water.

The following is from Rep. Wynn's WWW site (see link above). The letter from Wynn and Solis to David Walker, Comptroller General of the GAO is also on the site.

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Washington, DC, 31 January 2008

"In the past decade, sales of bottled water have reportedly tripled, but no one is examining the environmental ramifications of Americans shifting their water consumption from the traditional tap to the plastic bottle," Wynn said.  "Petroleum is used in the manufacture of bottled water containers and transporting bottled water requires the use of additional fossil fuels.  today, we are asking GAO to look into the scope of these problems."

"As policymakers, it is our responsibility to ensure that all sources of drinking water, including bottled water, are safe for consumers to drink," said Solis. "Given the growing prevalence of bottled water, it is imperative that we have all the information regarding not only the source and labeling, but also the unintended consequences of this trend."

In their letter to GAO, the two lawmakers ask that GAO examine the effect that increased bottled water consumption is having on municipal landfill capacity, as well as the effects of energy use from the transportation and manufacture of bottled water.  The lawmakers also raised questions about the purity of bottled water and whether bottled water suppliers provide the details of the water source on their labels.

"Many consumers think that when they buy bottled water, they are consuming water from a pristine natural source that is purer than tap water," Wynn said.  "However, recent media reports have exposed some companies simply bottling and selling tap water.  GAO should examine how bottled water is labeled so we know consumers of bottled water are not being deceived."

Wynn and Solis are also asking the Government Accountability Office to examine EPA's failure to update its current drinking water standard for Trichloroethylene (TCE).  An EPA 2001 assessment found TCE was far more likely to cause cancer than previously believed.  Despite this assessment and a recommendation from the National Academy of Science, EPA has failed to update its national drinking water standard for TCE.

The evidence of the dangers of TCE keep piling up and the EPA keeps failing to act," Wynn added.  "Hopefully, GAO can shed some much needed light on the reasons for EPA's inaction."

The EPA's current drinking water standard for TCE allows a maximum of 5 parts per billion, but some have called for a revision of that standard to reduce the maximum amount of TCE allowed in water.

Finally, the letter asks GAO to evaluate the Environmental Protection Agency's process for selecting potential contaminants for regulatory action.  The EPA has published two new "Contaminant Candidate Lists" (CCLs) since 1996, but the agency has not identified a single new contaminant for subsequent regulatory action, including perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel which presents a risk to human health in vulnerable populations like pregnant women and children. The letter from Wynn and Solis asks the GAO to evaluate the CCL process to determine if it is workable and effective to protect public health.

"Given that the EPA has published two Contaminant Candidate Lists since 1996, but failed to take action to regulate dangerous contaminants like perchlorate, one has to wonder whether the EPA's process adequately protects the public health," Wynn said.

In November, the Subcommittee passed H.R. 1747, the "Safe Drinking Water for Healthy Communities Act of 2007," legislation authored by Solis and cosponsored by Wynn, which would require EPA to create a national drinking water standard for perchlorate.

"We must do our best to make sure that water providers and consumers have confidence in the regulatory process," said Solis. "Unfortunately, the EPA's track record under the contaminant candidate list leaves room to question how effectively the process may work. I look forward to the GAO's evaluation of the existing process and to continued efforts to protect public health and the environment."

"The EPA's delay on perchlorate is inexcusable," Wynn concluded.  "As the EPA has failed to act, I will continue working to pass legislation to protect Americans from perchlorate in drinking water."

Last week, Wynn and Solis released a report prepared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that found that more than 200 commonly consumed foods and beverages are contaminated with perchlorate, bolstering the argument for a national drinking water standard for perchlorate.
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"The world is run by those who show up." -- Unknown

Scam of Scams: Guess What?

In his column "Scam of scams: bottled water", Silver Donald Cameron lays it all out about bottled water in the Chronicle-Herald Nova Scotian (Halifax, NS).

Aren't Canadians supposed to be the world's "nice guys"? Wow! You go, guy!

Toss that bottle of Fiji...We are making a difference!

********************

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.

In 1976, the average American drank less than two gallons of bottled water a year. Today, that figure is 30 gallons, and sales are growing at more than 10 per cent a year — faster than any other beverage. Bottled-water companies spend hundreds of millions a year on advertising — and Americans now spend $15 billion a year on bottled water. No doubt the figures would be comparable in Canada.

But bottled water is a scam, a triumph of brilliant marketing and knavish politics. The bottled-water industry routinely implies that the water from your taps, supplied by a municipal water authority, is not clean enough to drink. It further implies that bottled water is drawn from pristine natural sources, and is naturally cleaner and purer than tap water.

In fact, about 40 per cent of bottled water actually is tap water. The biggest-selling brands are Aquafina, which is owned by Pepsi, and Dasani, which is owned by Coke. As Pepsi was forced to admit last summer, both brands are just filtered tap water — with an outrageous markup.

In Tucson, reports the Arizona Daily Star, Aquafina costs $1.39 per half-litre bottle. The contents come from the Tucson municipal water system, which provides 6.4 gallons for a penny. The Aquafina consumer is paying roughly 7,000 times more for the same water.

Furthermore, many bottled-water companies are actually less rigorous in testing for purity and quality than are the municipal systems. One process used to enhance tap water is ozonation, which has a byproduct called bromate, a suspected carcinogen. In 2004, when Coca-Cola launched Dasani in the United Kingdom, the company was embarrassed to discover that about half a million bottles were contaminated with excess bromate.

In other words, the quality of the water was better before it was "purified." The company withdrew the tainted water — and also withdrew from the U.K. bottled-water market.

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.

Happily, municipalities are taking offence. Last June, the U.S. Conference of Mayors noted that their 1,100 cities spend $43 billion a year to provide clean drinking water to citizens — and yet city officials often purchased bottled water for city employees. Led by San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis, the group called for an impartial investigation into the environmental effects of bottled water. San Francisco subsequently ordered a complete ban on bottled-water purchases from public funds, as did the state of Illinois. Los Angeles has had such a ban for a decade.

"There’s a sucker born every minute," said circus magnate P.T. Barnum. And what the suckers are sucking on today are beautifully labelled plastic bottles of water, adorned by blue mountain peaks with white glacier caps.

When gasoline prices rise much above a dollar a litre, consumers vigorously object — but they cheerfully pay three or four times that much for tap water in designer bottles. Barnum would have loved it.

***************

"True freedom, when faced with a choice of A and B, is to create C." -- Robert Grudin

Reader's Digest: Rethink What You Drink

The February 2008 issue of Reader's Digest has a very good article about bottled water that touches upon all the issues: eco-footprint, price, safety (EPA regulation of drinking water vs. FDA regulation of bottled water, excluding bottled water packaged and sold within the same state), plastic bottles and the possibility of chemicals leaching into the water, etc.

Colleague and friend Todd Jarvis is quoted in the article.

The article concludes with a section on what you can do if you're worried about bottled water. Here is the list of things to do; the details are in the article.

• Try tap water again
• Get a canteen (stainless steel preferable)
• Shop smart
• Think twice about the office water cooler
• Keep it cool - don't drink from a plastic bottle that has been exposed to heat
• Go with glass bottles
• Use a filter on your tap

"A conservationist is someone who built his mountain cabin last year; a developer is someone who wants to build his mountain cabin this year." -- old Colorado saying

Battle Over Bottled vs. Tap Water

Today's Christian Science Monitor (CSM), the source of the accompanying picture, has an article, 'The Battle Over Bottled vs. Tap Water', describing the growing backlash against bottled water in the USA. The article by Tony Azios forms the basis for this post.

The backlash stems primarily from the negative press over the environmental footprint of bottled water - plastic bottles, transportation costs, etc.

Some of the pushback occurs because consumers realize that as much as 40% of the bottled water they drink is nothing more than filtered tap water that is not necessarily healthier or better tasting than plain tap water. It certainly is not cheaper. 

A number of high-profile cases involving the banning of bottled water at government-sponsored functions has also added fuel to the fire. For governments, it's also an economic issue: in each of the past two fiscal years, the City of San Francisco spent just under $500,000 for bottled water for its employees and official functions. No more.

Bottled water companies are responding by trying to become "greener" - using less energy, particularly in packaging, "earth-friendly" materials, or carbon offsets.  For example Fiji, the second-largest imported bottled water brand in the USA, plans to become carbon-negative by 2010. This still would not alter the fact that we do not need to waste a valuable resource, petroleum hydrocarbons (energy), transporting Fijian water to the USA to drink it.

Fiji bills its water as coming from an "artesian aquifer". As a hydrologist, let me assure you that the term "artesian" does not at all indicate whether the water is of good-quality or healthy. It simply refers to a particular hydrogeologic/hydraulic condition under which the water occurs. Nor is "spring water" especially healthy or "magical". It's marketing, pure and simple.

Check out the movement Think Outside The Bottle, a project of Corporate Accountability International. You can also visit International Bottled Water Association's WWW site to see what the industry is doing. See my earlier post about the bottled water fact sheet from the Pacific Institute.

Here is a related article from the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

There are times and places for bottled water. But they are not as frequent or as many as the bottled water industry would have us believe.

"Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all." -- Peter Drucker

Bottled Water Fact Sheet from the Pacific Institute

Former student and current hydrogeologist excelente Amy Ewing knows I am a sucker for bottled water stuff so she sent me this Pacific Institute fact sheet.

On NPR the other day I caught one of their hosts giving a list of trends to look for in 2008. One of them was a backlash against bottled water. See, life isn't all bad.

Download bottled_water_factsheet.pdf

"The world is run by those who show up." -- Unknown

What Would Jesus Drink? Spiritual Bottled Water, Of Course!

Todd Jarvis sent me this link to an article by Lisa Miller in the 17 December 2007 issue of Newsweek. It's about yet another bottled-water marketing scam to bamboozle the public. But then again, we had stuff like this when I was a kid. It was called ''holy water".

Miller points out how water has been critical to faith for thousands of years. Water is the medium of baptism in Christianity. Muslims wash before they pray. Now marketers are capitalizing on that fact and selling bottled water to bring out the spirtuality (??) in us all. But not everyone thinks this is a good idea.

The article follows. When you get to the part about Liquid OM you'll swear you're back in Marin County in the 1970s.

Bless This Bottled Water

by Lisa Miller, Newsweek

You need only go back to the first chapter of Genesis to see how elemental water is to the observance of faith: "And the Spirit of God," the Bible says, "moved upon the face of the waters." In the Torah, water is used to ordain priests and to purify the sons of Aaron before they enter the temple. In the New Testament, John baptizes Jesus with water from the Jordan River. Observant Muslims wash hands and feet before they pray, orthodox Jewish women take ritual baths once a month—and every Christian denomination still uses water as part of its sacred rites. Mormons, when they take the weekly sacrament, drink water instead of wine.

Courtesy of Spirtual Water and Newsweek.

The most recent entry in this niche is Spiritual Water. It's purified municipal water, sold with 10 different Christian labels. The Virgin Mary bottle, for example, has the Hail Mary prayer printed on the back in English and Spanish. Spiritual Water helps people to "stay focused, believe in yourself and believe in God," says Elicko Taieb, the Florida-based company's founder who was formerly in the pest-control business. All three companies give a portion of their profits to charity.

So it's not surprising that a few savvy marketers would seize on this universal symbol of purity for financial gain. Inspired, perhaps, by vitamin and energy waters, a number of new companies have begun making more explicit claims: their water doesn't just promote good health, it actually makes you good. Holy Drinking Water, produced by a California-based company called Wayne Enterprises, is blessed in the warehouse by an Anglican or Roman Catholic priest (after a thorough background check). Like a crucifix or a rosary, a bottle of Holy Drinking Water is a daily reminder to be kind to others, says Brian Germann, Wayne's CEO. Another company makes Liquid OM, superpurified bottled water containing vibrations that promote a positive outlook. Invented by Kenny Mazursky, a sound therapist in Chicago, the water purportedly possesses an energy field that Mazursky makes by striking a giant gong and Tibetan bowls in its vicinity. He says the good energy can be felt not just after you drink the water but before, when you're holding the bottle.

This small band of feel-good entrepreneurs may face objections from a surprising quarter. Some religious believers, also convinced of the elemental importance of water, are campaigning against its ubiquitous sale and packaging on the grounds that the practice is neither ethical nor good for the environment. "Water is life," says Sister Mary Zirbes, a nun in the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls, Minn. "It really should not be a commodity to be bought." The Franciscan Sisters, together with a community of Benedictine nuns nearby, have launched a letter-writing campaign against the largest producers of bottled water and they've designed coasters to encourage people to drink glasses, not bottles, of water from the tap. The Vineyard church in Boise, Idaho, sells slim reusable plastic bottles in its bookstore, and it has placed water stations throughout the church. "In a world where a billion people have no reliable source of drinking water, where 3,000 children die every day of waterborne diseases, let's be clear: bottled water is not a sin, but it sure is a choice," says Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). "Spending $15 billion a year on bottled water is a testimony to our conspicuous consumption, our culture of indulgence." Taieb calmly refutes the implication that his Spiritual Water is bad for the planet. People put fewer of his bottles in the trash, he says, because they don't want to discard images of Jesus or Mary. Instead, they refill them with other beverages. Obviously, even do-gooders can disagree. Some believe that water is life, while others believe that water is their livelihood.

"There's a sucker born every minute." -- P.T. Barnum

Pigs Are Flying: I Agree With a Bottled Water Industry Position

Have I finally gone daft? Or worse, been bought off?

Do I no longer see anything wrong with spending the equivalent of a million (give or take) dollars per acre-foot for a product that is provided safely for virtually nothing? Wasteful plastic bottles or energy needlessly spent shipping water from one part of the country to another?

No, I've not sold out. It's just that I find myself agreeing with the testimony of Joseph Doss, President and CEO of the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA). Doss testified before a House of Representatives subcommittee on 12 December 2007 about the need for more comprehensive ground water management and aquifer data.

You can read the press release and his testimony below:

Download ibwa_press_release.htm

Doss also said that use of ground water for bottling should be treated no differently than any other industrial use.

No complaints from me.

He did put in a plug for the small amount of ground water used by the industry, and I suspect he's right when he says it is only 0.02% of all USA ground water withdrawals. That's about the amount of water used by a small city like Albany, NY, or Springfield, MA. But what he forgot to mention is that if that small amount relative to the entire nation is occurring in your neighborhood or from your aquifer, then it might be very significant. Robert Glennon talked of this in his excellent book Water Follies.

Pass me that Dasani, will you?

"The meek shall inherit the earth but not its water rights" -- Anonymous

The Ellsworth (Maine) American Says Bottled Water Is "The Big Con Job"

Bottled Water: The Big Con Job

Editorial, The Ellsworth (ME) American, 13 September 2007   (here's the link)

Sometimes there’s simply no understanding human behavior. Why will so many Americans pay a premium price for something they can get for free? The same people who scream bloody murder about paying $3 a gallon for gasoline willingly plunk down as much as $6 a gallon for bottled water that is no better than — in some cases, inferior to — the water that comes straight out of the kitchen faucet.

Thanks mostly to unrelenting marketing campaigns, perceptions abound that bottled water, in its slick plastic packaging, is cleaner, healthier and tastes better than the alternatives. The Week magazine, a weekly digest of some of the best writing and reporting from the U.S. and international press, reports that in 2006, Americans spent $15 billion on 8.25 billion gallons of bottled water, and that one in five of us drink no tap water at all.

That’s simply amazing.

Extensive scientific testing shows that bottled water is neither cleaner nor healthier than tap water, reports The Week. In fact, Food and Drug Administration standards for bottled water are less stringent than Environmental Protection Agency standards for public water. Some testing has found bottled water with bacterial counts well in excess of those in tap water sources.

And if you believe that all bottled water is drawn from “pure mountain springs” and “glacial aquifers” and therefore better than that nasty stuff from the tap, think again. Co-op America, a national nonprofit consumer organization, asserts that, “according to government and industry estimates, as much as 40 percent of bottled water is actually tap water, sometimes with additional treatment, sometimes not.”

Some advocates of bottled water tout its undeniable convenience. But that convenience comes only at monumental cost. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that 1.5 million tons of plastic are turned into water bottles each year, and at best, only about a quarter of those empty bottles are recycled. In addition to the energy input involved in manufacturing the bottles, there is the vast amounts of energy consumed in transporting those bottles to all corners of the world. The Week reports that the equivalent of 37,800 18-wheel trucks is needed to distribute the bottle water hauled across the United States every week.

And lest we forget, the $1.50 spent on a 20-ounce bottle of water would pay for about 1,000 gallons of muncipal tap water. If it’s convenience you’re after, buy one portable container and keep it filled with water from your faucet. In addition to being environmentally friendly, you’ll save a whole bunch of money.

It’s also worth noting that water is a finite resource that already is all but unavailable in some areas of the world. Does it make sense, then, to relinquish the public water trust to private companies that extract as many as 500 gallons a minute, per well, around the clock from aquifers that also may support private wells, streams and wetlands?

Maine is home to one of the major players in the bottled water industry. Nestle Waters North America operates Poland Spring, the nation’s largest bottled spring water company. But it is not Maine’s only bottled water operation. There are approximately two dozen such companies now operating in the state, extracting at least a billion gallons of water a year, according to a citizens group called H2O for Maine. Thanks largely to that group’s efforts, the 123rd Legislature took little noticed steps this year to more closely regulate commercial water extractions. Part of that legislation includes a comprehensive watershed and drinking water well management program under the state Natural Resources Protection Act.

But water will be the oil of the 21st century and underlying questions remain, not just in Maine but wherever this increasingly precious resource can be found. Who will control the groundwater, and when it comes to extraction, who will determine what is sustainable for all interested parties? Lives — millions of them — ultimately may depend on the answers.

"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one." -- Malcolm Forbes

Guilt by the Bottleful - NYT Article

The 12 August 2007 New York Times has an excellent article by Alex Williams, "Water, Water Everywhere, but Guilt by the Bottleful", on how people are starting to think twice about drinking bottled water. You can read it by clicking here (you may have to register for free to read it).

There was one part I loved. A 22-year old nanny, sipping on a bottle of Poland Spring, was concerned as to why the focus was on bottled water and not things like Coke or shampoo, which also come in plastic bottles. I'll leave that one alone and let others figure that one out. It's obvious she couldn't.

And I am not against all bottled water. There is a time and a place for it. I'm down here in Chile, drinking bottled water whenever I am advised that the local supply is suspect. But the excessive consumption of bottled water, when we have perfectly good tap water, is ridiculous and a waste of precious resources.

"Never understimate the power of very stupid people in large groups." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

NY Times: In Praise of Tap Water

The "Gray Lady" editorializes against bottled water, and, in doing so, makes an important point: that if the wealthy opt out of tap water, there will be less political support for maintaining the USA's excellent municipal drinking-water supplies, which are essential for good health. I don't recall ever having heard anyone make this point.

It is interesting to note that the USA's early municipal drinking water supplies were made safer (chlorination, filtration, etc.) by often appealing to the wealthy: upgrading was necessary because it would mean a healthier cadre of workers and less time lost on the job (I learned this from my colleague Todd Jarvis). How ironic - today or in the near future, the wealthy's attitude towards tap water could result in the downgrading of municipal drinking water supplies.

You can also add Santa Fe, NM, to the list of cities where the mayor has spoken out against bottled water. Mayor David Coss will ban it from future City Hall meetings but has not issued an outright ban, which might be a tough sell in Santa Fe, which suffers from "terminal pretension".

In Praise of Tap Water

Published: August 1, 2007

On the streets of New York or Denver or San Mateo this summer, it seems the telltale cap of a water bottle is sticking out of every other satchel. Americans are increasingly thirsty for what is billed as the healthiest, and often most expensive, water on the grocery shelf. But this country has some of the best public water supplies in the world. Instead of consuming four billion gallons of water a year in individual-sized bottles, we need to start thinking about what all those bottles are doing to the planet's health.

Here are the hard, dry facts: Yes, drinking water is a good thing, far better than buying soft drinks, or liquid candy, as nutritionists like to call it. And almost all municipal water in America is so good that nobody needs to import a single bottle from Italy or France or the Fiji Islands. Meanwhile, if you choose to get your recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,400 annually. The same amount of tap water would cost about 49 cents.

Next, there's the environment. Water bottles, like other containers, are made from natural gas and petroleum. The Earth Policy Institute in Washington has estimated that it takes about 1.5 million barrels of oil to make the water bottles Americans use each year. That could fuel 100,000 cars a year instead. And, only about 23 percent of those bottles are recycled, in part because water bottles are often not included in local redemption plans that accept beer and soda cans. Add in the substantial amount of fuel used in transporting water, which is extremely heavy, and the impact on the environment is anything but refreshing.

Tap water may now be the equal of bottled water, but that could change. The more the wealthy opt out of drinking tap water, the less political support there will be for investing in maintaining America's public water supply. That would be a serious loss. Access to cheap, clean water is basic to the nation's health.

Some local governments have begun to fight back. Earlier this summer, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom prohibited his city's departments and agencies from buying bottled water, noting that San Francisco water is "some of the most pristine on the planet". Salt Lake City has issued a similar decree, and New York City recently began an advertising campaign that touted its water as "clean," "zero sugar" and even "stain free."

The real change, though, will come when millions of ordinary consumers realize that they can save money, and save the planet, by turning in their water bottles and turning on the tap.

Copyright 2007, New York Times

PepsiCo Comes Clean: Aquafina Comes From Tap Water

PepsiCo has decided to admit that its Aquafina bottled water is indeed from a "public water source" (aka "tap water"), the words it will use on its label.

The story was posted by Reuters on 27 July 2007. 

Coca-Cola's Dasani is also made from public sources, and a spokesperson told Reuters that the company will post information on its WWW site as to the testing it does on its bottled water by the end of the summer or early fall.

"Concerns about the bottled-water industry, and increasing corporate control of water, are growing across the country," said Gigi Kellett, director of the Think Outside the Bottle campaign, which encourages the consumption of tap water.

Industry observers don't think these "admissions" will affect USA bottled water sales. One portfolio manager quoted in the article said that Coke and Pepsi don't make a lot of profit on bottled water.

Uh-huh.

"We grow too soon old and too late smart." -- Anonymous

Bottled Water Debate on NPR

NPR's Talk of the Nation's 23 July 2007 show (click here) featured a discussion/debate on bottled water.

Featured speakers:

Ross "Rocky" Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City, who recently banned SLC departments from using taxpayers' money to purchase bottled water.

Bill Marsh, author of "A Battle Between the Bottle and the Faucet", recently published in the New York Times (see my 15 July 2007 post).

Joesph Doss, president and CEO of the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA).

Good show - give a listen.

By the way, while at the Eugene (OR) airport on Monday I saw a local brand of bottled water that proclaimed it had "mono-atomic minerals". So, single atom minerals - if I recall my mineralogy, that would mean things like gold, silver, platinum, native copper,.....??? It was $2.50 for a 17-ounce bottle, which is almost $19 per gallon. Oh yeah, it was also pH balanced (7.7) with extra oxygen. What was that P.T. Barnum said? Probably a big seller in Eugene (a "Boulder-type" town).

I read yet another assessment of top municipal waters in the USA. This time it was Salt Lake City, with Charleston, SC, in second place. Guess Mayor Rocky can justify his actions.

Here is a related