Happy Earth Day!

Here's some tips for Earth Day and beyond!!

Stop consuming bottled water! Buy a reusable container and drink tap or filtered water.

Bring your own bags when shopping

Ride your bike to work or school

Turn of lights when you leave the room

Limit the length of your showers

Reuse your morning coffee cup

Reduce your use of paper towels or paper products

Buy products with less packaging and always recycle plastic packaging

Earth Day is as good a time as any to reconsider both this dependency and what comes out of our tap. Try it. The Earth will like it.

Where The Dark Water Flows...

Nestle's another one of those corporations that needs to be brought to people's attentions and here's why :

Not only known for their problems with selling baby milk powder, and causing problems by cutting out the breast feeding of children in Third World countries, they also have a substantial interest in dominating the bottled water market.

Here's some information on the baby milk powder issue, BTW.

Nestlé is targeted with the boycott because monitoring conducted by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) finds it to be responsible for more violations of the World Health Assembly marketing requirements for baby foods than any other company (see the codewatch section for profiles of the different companies to target their malpractice).

Babymilkaction website

And again with the water...
With water scarcity a growing problem in the Southern USA, why are such deals (especially at such rock bottom prices) even being allowed to occur ? Water is a resource that life depends on, that all of us depend on, and when it is sold off to corporations for such low prices, or indeed at any price, local people will ultimately pay the penalty, while profits are made by the distant corporation. Without water, the land is worthless.


Here's Nestle Waters home page, which contains their environmental policy, in the interests of fairness :

and a message from their "Enviornmental Stewardship" program
“We do great environmental work before we come into a place and continuous monitoring work to make sure the water resources are sustainable for a long time. You can’t build a plant on wheels. The spring water source has to be there 100 years from now, and in order to do that, we’ve got to have good land use practices and aquifer practices. We’ve got to know what’s coming out of there and how fast it’s being replenished. The health of the aquifer is paramount to us.”
BTW...that quote is from 2004...I'd say the bottled water industry and the water resources have changed dramatically over the past four years don't you agree?

***
While searching I found a blog on blogspot focused on boycotting nestle...check it out.

Penn and Teller

The craze of bottled water is a national obsession but tap water is usually safer for you, and often better tasting too. Using a hidden camera, Penn & Teller take a look at the obsession.

Make sure to watch the video until the end...my favorite part is the Amazonian Spider!

Water Wars

This BusinessWeek article shows how yet again Nestle is evil!
In McCloud, a small town near Mount Shasta in Northern California, Nestle plans to operate one of the largest water bottling plants in the US on the site of an old lumber mill pumping 1,250 gallons a minute of McClouds water!!
In exchange, Nestle has agreed to pay McCloud roughly $350,000 a year for the water and create up to 240 jobs around town (remember what Nestle promised in Florida?)
And even though the paperwork was signed almost five years ago...the plant is still not up and running. McCloud residents are up in arms, furious that their representatives would sign the contract without consulting them. Opponents to the project say it could dry up local aquifers and deplete Squaw Valley Creek, a trout stream and the McCloud's major tributary. It has also been contended that Nestlé's deal may not be a sound one financially for the town.



Here is McCloud's watershed council website with more information.

Going Green

I would like all of you to take the Pledge to Reduce Bottled Water Waste!

Brita and Nalgene have teamed up to create the FilterForGood pledge. It’s a simple commitment to reduce your personal waste by giving up bottled water, even if it’s just a few days each week. Together, filtered water and a reusable bottle are an ideal solution for going green at home and on the go. It’s an easy change that can make a big difference!!

Not only can you make the pledge and get a coupon for a Brita filter on this site, but you can also use the 'map the pledge' tool to calculate how many bottles were saved in each state.

Nestle

This article from The Consumerist sheads light on Nestle's attempt to take water from the state of Florida and not give back to the state in any way shape or form.
Nestle got a permit to take water belonging to Floridians — hundreds of millions of gallons a year from a spring in a state park — at no cost to Nestle. No taxes. No fees. Just a $230 permit to pump water until 2018. Nestle bottles that water, ships it throughout the Southeast — much of it to Georgia and the Carolinas — and makes millions upon millions of dollars in profits on it. Although Nestle had promised to create over 300 jobs for the region, the number has dropped to 205 late last year, 46 of them aren't even from the state of Florida! A Nestle spokeswoman was quoted "Treat us like any other user," he said. "People do not take bottled water and wash their dog. They do not wash their car with it. They drink it. That's the highest and best use of water."
Jeb Bush, who was governor at the time, did not respond to questions about Nestle's Madison County operations. As an added incentive for Nestle, the state approved a tax refund of up to $1.68-million for the Madison bottling operation. To date, Nestle has received two refunds totaling $196,000 and requested a third tax refund.

For All You Chapman Film Students

Takebackthetap.org is hosting a contests for students to declare their love for tap water on film! Make a video about why you are drinking tap water and why your school needs to kick the bottled water habit. The video will be judged and the winner will win $1500 and their video will be featured on their website. The judges include Alec Baldwin!

April Fools!

Takebackthetap.org
Which is the Tap Water?

Coke and Pepsi's New Marketing Strategy: Pull at Your Heart Strings

This article is lengthy but really good, it relates back to the Pepsi/Ethos post I made a little while back and further discusses Coca-Cola's plan for future celebrity endorsers of their bottled water brands, and Danone's partnership with Unicef for their new ad campaign. All I can do is hope that consumers will not associate the purchase of a water bottle as a positive, instead they should think of the detrimental environmental impact.

From Alternet.org

World Water Day 2008 (March 22) will see a flurry of announcements from bottled water companies who claim to be helping solve the globe's water crisis. The catch is that these altruistic claims are intimately tied to major advertising campaigns designed to convince the public to buy their products.
Numerous media and industry reports are saying that sales of bottled water are slowing as a result of campaigns targeting the product's environmental and social impact. In a recent article, Brandweek declared that Pepsi and Coke are facing "evaporating sales growth for bottled water and increased concerns about their products' impact on the environment."
Another report, from industry publication Beverage Digest, said that sales and growth of the bottled water industry in 2007 was about half of what it was in 2006. Recently reported annual results from the world's largest bottled water company Nestlé show a slowdown in growth in its bottled water sector from 2006. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, global sales growth has consistently dropped since 2003.
The slowdown in growth of bottled water sales combined with industry reports and widespread media attention on the negative impacts of bottled water highlight how the global anti-bottled water campaign is having a major impact. While campaigners may raise a crystal glass (of tap water) to this news, it is important to keep in mind that the industry is not rolling over and going away. People are still buying huge amounts of the stuff and the corporations will be trying their best to keep existing customers and attract new markets in new regions. The question is how will bottled water companies continue to convince people to buy its products.
How will the BW giants fight the backlash?
Marketing trade publication Brandweek predicts that Coke and Pepsi will fight the growing backlash against bottled water with intense 'ethical' or 'responsible' marketing, understood as tying the purchase of a product to charitable activities. A number of ad campaigns for bottled water already include charitable ties. According to Brandweek, the use of A-list celebrity endorsements of these types of campaigns is likely to increase.
PepsiCo has already started down this path through its relationship with Matt Damon. Earlier this year PepsiCo donated $2.5 million to Damon's H20 Africa clean water initiative. To compliment Pepsi's donation, the movie star is endorsing Ethos bottled water (Starbucks' bottled water brand), which will be launched nationally this spring through PepsiCo and Starbucks' North American Coffee Partnership joint venture.
The Ethos brand is promoted by claiming to donate 5 cents from every bottle sold to help children around the world gain access to clean water. Part of a slogan from the brand's upcoming North American ad campaign states "if you choose to drink bottled water, please choose to make a difference." Until now Ethos water has only been available at Starbucks' 7,000 North American outlets. This will soon change when PepsiCo's huge national distribution system moves the brand out to 40,000 merchandisers in North America.
Not to be outdone, according to Brandweek, Coca-Cola North America is getting ready to launch its own 'socially responsible' water brand. There is speculation that the company will enlist a movie star to co-brand the new beverage. Coke already uses celebrities to shill its various brands, and it is only matter of time until a public figure endorser steps up to push Coke's green message.
Coke is no stranger to this type of marketing and has recently been in hot water for pushing one of its water brands by convincing people that its product will help reforest Australia. In a recent ad campaign for its Mt. Franklin water brand, customers are encouraged to 'plant a tree' by registering the bottle's barcode on the company's website. Once registered, the company along with its partner Landcare Australia will plant a tree in the registrant's name.
Under the arrangement Coca Cola Amatil (30 percent owned by The Coca-Cola Company) will pay one of Australia's biggest environmental groups, Landcare, $150,000 to plant 250,000 trees. In return, Coca Cola Amatil places the well known Landcare logo on every bottle of Mt. Franklin Water. One Landcare employee who spoke out against the partnership said that the logo is being used "by a corporate giant who is only interested in greenwashing public opinion and tricking people living in the city into thinking they are doing the correct thing by the environment by purchasing their product."
Selling green to make green
Which ever way you look at it, this technique known in the marketing world as 'responsible' or 'ethical' marketing, is just that, marketing. In other words, it is a means to convince people to buy a product, thus, ensuring higher profits with a bonus to the company of greenwashing social and environmental impacts. This tactic is a clever trick because it lends brands a social image and injects a charitable dimension into consumer spending.
The technique is not new and the bottled water industry has used this type of marketing in the past to sell its products. In one example, a Danone ad campaign in Germany for the Volvic brand used the ad slogan '1 litre for 10 litres' accompanied by the UNICEF logo. The goal was to tell consumers that for every litre of Volvic water purchased 10 litres of clean drinking water would be provided for communities in Ethiopia. The campaign was structured around a donation of $250,000 euros from Danone to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). German magazine Der Spiegel called the campaign unclear and revealed that when calculated with monthly sales figures the donation amounted to 0.28 cents per liter sold during the three month campaign.
Danone revived this ad campaign in North America in 2008. This time it has pledged $500,000 to UNICEF and will use the tagline "every litre of Volvic you drink will provide ten litres of clean drinking water to children in Ethiopia." Danone started this marketing campaign in Germany and has extended it to France, Japan and now the US.
'Charitable Solution'
Brandweek calls this the industry's 'charitable solution' to a drop in sales. This type of marketing preys on the heart of the consumer by capitalizing on guilt and conscience. Companies employing these types of ad campaigns try to convince the public that they are doing the right thing. Marketing experts point out that marketing strategies, in general, work best when they enjoy the support of society at large. When companies use agencies like UNICEF to promote their products they hope to earn long-run support by making people feel (including noncustomers) served by the ad campaign.
It is stressed by ad experts that major trends point to consumers wanting and expecting brands to make a commitment to social and environmental change. Marketers know that consumers are beginning to choose brands that claim to be giving something back to society.
To verify this tendency one needs only to quickly browse the websites of the big four global bottled water companies (Coke, Pepsi, Nestlé and Danone) where environmental and sustainability initiatives are boldly highlighted. All four of the big bottled water companies are also clamoring to show the world that they are taking the lead on issues such as water sustainability and climate change. One such example is the UN Global Compact's CEO Water Mandate (all four companies have signed on), a voluntary initiative designed to enlist corporations to address the water challenge faced by the world today. Under the guise of environmental stewardship, it actually provides a roadmap for increasing corporate control over water governance and management.
Paradox and mis-perceptions. These advertising strategies are slick corporate maneuvering and posturing that expose a glaring paradox. Bottled water, along with the overall operations of the corporations involved, remain central players to the very problems the marketing campaigns claim to be trying to solve. Contributions to green house gas emissions, use of fossil fuels and increasing corporate control of water resources are just a few of the numerous ways the industry contributes to the very things they claim to be helping through what can be called mis-perception marketing.
The corporations hope this strategy will construct a positive image of a corporate brand as a solution to the problem of water scarcity or climate change instead of one of the causes. Their goal is to associate the purchase of a bottled of water with a good deed in order to convince people that their products are beneficial to society while ensuring continued sales growth.
Make no mistake the industry is ultimately concerned about the drop in growth of bottle water and is looking for solutions to bolster sales and respond to the growing, well organized and visible global anti-bottled water campaign.
So remember, look closely this World Water Day at who is behind the glossy well produced advertisements claiming to help protect our global common good. Chances are that the stirring and emotional call to arms for the defense of water is tied to a company looking for a way to brighten its sagging water brands, greenwash its destructive operations and gain more control of its main raw material. All of this comes under the guise of helping the 1 billion people around the world without access to clean water, when it is profit for a much smaller number of shareholders that is the real objective.

World Water Day

I guess I missed it by a few days but happy world water day! San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom took the opportunity of United Nations' World Water Day March 22 to follow the city's lead by replacing bottled water with tap water. In June 2007, Mayor Newsom issued an Executive Directive barring use of city funds to buy bottled water in an effort to protect the environment. City departments have nearly reached full compliance with the bottled water ban.

I Need Water, Good Good Water

I got a kick out of these...

Message in a Bottle

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Drink bottled water. Make a difference.

Pepsi is partnering in its Ethos mission with Matt Damon's group, H2O Africa.That's the theme behind a campaign for the widespread launch of Ethos, the brand that up until now has been available only in 7,000 Starbucks locations. In a partnership with Pepsi-Cola North America, the brand is being rolled out to 40,000 mass merchandisers as well as convenience, supermarkets and drugstores in a push that will benefit water-stressed countries. For each bottle of Ethos sold, 5 cents is contributed to the Ethos Water Fund; the brand's goal is a donation of $10 million by 2010. H2O Africa And that led Pepsi to a natural spokesman: actor Matt Damon. The company is partnering in its Ethos mission with Mr. Damon's group, H2O Africa, which aims to bring clean water to the continent. H2O Africa was born out of a documentary project titled "Running the Sahara," which makes its debut this spring. Both groups' missions dovetail with the company's broader corporate vision, said Ahad Afridi, VP-waters at Pepsi-Cola North America. In January, PepsiCo pledged $8.5 million to drive sustainable water practices. The campaign will be the first for the bottled-water brand, which is owned by Starbucks but is packaged, distributed and marketed by Pepsi-Cola as part of the North American Coffee Partnership, a joint venture between the beverage giant and the coffee chain. The ads, which were created by BBDO Worldwide, will run in April and May issues of magazines, including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Time, GQ, Sports Illustrated and O, the Oprah Magazine. Because of the nature of the brand, Mr. Afridi said a print campaign made more sense than a splashy TV effort. "We ruled out a lot of different celebrities that we could have used," Mr. Afridi said, of the company's choice of Mr. Damon. "The other thing that's important here: This is a brand that would not be right to scream about. We have a nice print campaign and a good partnership in place. We want to let the brand speak for itself." The ad shows Mr. Damon with some young children and reads: "Over 1 billion people around the world lack clean water. ... Every time you buy a bottle of Ethos, money goes to help provide children with the access to clean water they need. So if you choose to drink bottled water, please choose to make a difference." Bottled water sales The massive rollout comes as bottled water is gaining traction with U.S. consumers who are favoring better-for-you options. According to Beverage Marketing Corp., wholesale sales of bottled water have more than doubled since 2001, although Beverage Digest reports that retail sales of bottled water (excluding vending machines and Wal-Mart) grew only 9% in 2007 compared with 16% in 2006. Mr. Afridi said the company has been strengthening the brand for a national launch behind the scenes for some time. Key to that was designing a new bottle. The design agency IDO was brought on to handle that project and the result is a simple shape with clean lines and little messaging. "It's got a very new, distinct look to it," he said. "We wanted to achieve the right balance between being true to the cause and the mission of Ethos, as well as giving it a premium look." The bottle will be available in three sizes, a 700-milliliter version that is exclusive to Starbucks, as well as a 500 milliliter and 1 liter size for the mass market. Ethos will be positioned as premium to Pepsi's Aquafina brand and compete with Fiji, Evian and Voss, Mr. Afridi said.

This is a wonderful idea, but do we really need MORE bottled water out in the marketplace? Is poluting the planet with even more plastic bottles the solution to helping out those in need?

20/20

In this video, 20/20 took five bottles of national brands of bottled water and a sample of tap water from a drinking fountain in the middle of New York City and sent them to microbiologist Aaron Margolin of the University of New Hampshire to test for bacteria that can make you sick, like e. coli.

"There was actually no difference between the New York City tap water and the bottled waters that we evaluated," he said.

Trouble The Water

Associated Press

"A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.
To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe"

With all the drama going on in the news this week about tap water after the AP investigation....

This AP article came out today...

"The federal standards for acceptable levels of pharmaceutical residue in bottled water are the same as those for tap water — there aren't any.
The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the $12 billion bottled water industry in the United States, sets limits for chemicals, bacteria and radiation, but doesn't address pharmaceuticals.
Some water that's bottled comes from pristine, often underground rural sources; other brands have a source no more remote than local tap water. Either way, bottlers insist their products are safe, and say they generally clean the water with advanced treatments, though not explicitly for pharmaceuticals.
Nestle Waters North America Inc., an industry leader whose brands include Arrowhead, Poland Springs and Ozarka, said it selects sources that are removed from human activity, increasing the chances that the water will be pure. It then runs the water through three cleansing stages.
"We know that our multiple barrier process is effective," said Kevin Mathews, the company's director of health and environmental affairs.
Absent a regulatory mandate, however, Nestle follows the industry norm and does not test for pharmaceuticals. And given that testing can detect extremely small concentrations, Mathews would not rule out the presence of traces of pharmaceuticals in its water."I don't think anybody could say anything is free" from pharmaceuticals, Mathews said.Annual bottled water consumption in the United States has increased about 50%, to 30 gallons per person, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation. "The industry is monitoring it," said Bob Hirst, a vice president at the International Bottled Water Association, which represents dozens of brands. "But we haven't seen anything to alarm us at this point."

Just One Of Those Things

I Found this parody of Frank Sinatra's "Love and Marriage" on Google I thought I'd share..

Bottled Water, Bottled Water
Were we asleep, and led like sheep to slaughter
It don't come from brook springs
But, from plain faucets where we turn things

Bottled Water, Bottled Water
My wife believed, so all that crap I bought her
Maybe now she'll wise up
Stop eating advertising lies up

I, I, I was kinda' skeptic
Right from the day one
Some folks like to be the sucker
Easier to play one...

Bottled Water, Bottled Water
I hope the wife has learned this lesson taught her
Forget all that cap stuff
Once more, think sink and drink the tap stuff

Is--there--any chance this news could end
The water market?
No--more--than paid parking lots would crash
If we street park it...

Bottled Water, Bottled Water
Senate investigate 'em, someone ought a'
Truth is H2-Owed us..
Ain't right, the way they pimped and Ho'd us

No Sir!

Not right, the way they pimped and Ho'd us

...and I was drinking you goodbye

This may be old new to some of you, but I had to post it in my blog...being a San Francisco native and all...

First plastic bags, now bottled water; San Francisco is certainly setting an example. Mayor Gavin Newsom signed an order this week banning the use of City funds to purchase single-serving bottled water. The Mayor told Newsweek:

The transportation and distribution, developing the plastic for the water bottles, the cost of the water, has a huge environmental and economic impact....the difference between bottled water and Diet Coke is that you can’t get Diet Coke from the tap. It’s not like any other bottled liquids. These people are making huge amounts of money selling God’s natural resources. Sorry, we’re not going to be part of it. Our water in San Francisco comes from the Hetch Hetchy [reservoir] and is some of the most pristine water on the planet. Our water is arguably cleaner than a vast majority of the bottled water sold as "pure."

Why Tap Water?

From www.tappening.com

• Why would you want to pay more for a product whose quality is worse than the water that flows from the faucet in your home?
• More than 99.9 percent of Americans live in homes where unlimited amounts of fresh, treated water is available...so turn on the tap!
• Tap water contains chlorination which kills bacteria
• Water systems that provide tap water have to test for water pathogens that can cause intestinal problems, bottled water companies don’t do this
• City tap water can have no confirmed E.coli or fecal coliform bacteria. FDA bottled water rules include no such prohibition (a certain amount of any type of coliform bacteria is allowed in bottled water)
• City tap water, from surface water, must be filtered and disinfected. In contrast, there are no federal filtration or disinfection requirements for bottled water.
• Drinking tap water not only supports mental and physical health, but is easy on the planet. People who buy bottled water are doing harm to the environment and acting out of ignorance
• In one publicized taste test in New York City, conducted by Showtime television, researchers found that 75% of participants actually preferred the taste of tap water to bottled water
• Most cities using surface water have had to test for Cryptosporidium or Giardia, two common water pathogens, that can cause diarrhea and other intestinal problems, yet bottled water companies do not have to do this.
• City tap water must meet standards for certain important toxic or cancer-causing chemicals, such as phthalate (a chemical that can leach from plastic, including plastic bottles); some in the industry persuaded FDA to exempt bottled water from the regulations regarding these chemicals.
• City water systems must issue annual "right to know" reports, telling consumers what is in their water. Bottlers successfully killed a "right to know" requirement for bottled water.
• Tap water is the best water available; according to the New York State Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency, there is nothing harmful in tap water
• For those who feel tap water is any less clean than bottled water, filters may be purchased; buying filter cartridges once or twice a year requires much fewer resources than buying bottled water each day

Hustle and Flow

This Adweek article entitled "Hustle and Flow: Inside the Marketing Efforts to Make Tap Water Cool Again" targets Coca-Cola and Pepsi due to their claim that their tap water comes from "Alpine Springs" when it really comes from local water supplies. The article introduces the latest project by Droga5 (droga5.com) who started the 'Tap Project' for New York City which encourages restaurants to donate $1 every time a diner orders tap water instead of bottled water. The money goes to Unicef efforts to provide clean drinking water in third world countries. There is also Tappening.com which produce disposable plastic water bottles with messages that read "I bottle my own water" and "think global, drink local".

The website urges all visitors (more than 400,000) to write a message to coca cola saying "I'm switching to tap water" and place it in a plastic water bottle and will send the package to incoming Coca-cola CEO Muhtar Kent on his first day in July. The site also features 13 reasons not to drink bottled water which I will post later.

Reflecting Truth

Photographer Chris Jordan illustrates America's huge problem with single-use containers through his series of photographs. Jordan takes digital images and composts them to create massive digital prints that manifest these previously inconceivable statistics.

This photo depicts two million bottles used in the US every five minutes..

Here's the zoom

I posted these photos to help you wrap your head around the overwhelming amount of bottles being used and tossed away...and hopefully it will encourage you to do something about it.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog!

I have taken it upon myself to start up this blog and try to educate the consumer on the subject of bottled water.

Americans spent nearly $11 billion last year on bottled water, making it the nations' second-favorite beverage, after soft drinks. To meet the consumer need for this water, it takes 1.5 million barrels of oil--enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year--to make this plastic.

To make this worse, bottled water produces 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. Only 1 out of 5 water bottles makes it to the recycle bin. Most bottles end up in landfills adding to the landfill crisis.

Here is a film from you-tube animating water bottle recycle rates...

Why do we need to go out and buy bottles of water when we can just get it from our sink? That is a great question. Bottled water is no healthier than tap water. In theory, bottled water in the US falls under the regulatory authority of the FDA, but, because most of it never crosses state lines for sale, it becomes exempt from FDA oversight. Marketers would love for us to believe that bottled water comes from majestic alpine peaks, and that you will be a more beautiful

healthy person if you drink bottled water...but it's just not true!!!

Don't believe the hype! You can make a difference!I've started using re-usable water bottles like these...

AND

If you do insist on using water bottles please remember to use one of these...