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?

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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?