Bottled water backlash

Chi-chi restaurants are now banning bottled water. How did the ubiquitous accessory become the latest environmental sin? It’s not just daft, it’s decadent. In 2007, Canadians spent over $670 million on bottled water, consuming an amazing 2.3 billion litres of it. But, if early indications of the recent backlash are any indication, what was once a fashion accessory is becoming a fashion crime.

Bottled water got its start in the eighteenth century when Swiss doctors proclaimed the medicinal benefits of artificially carbonated water. Its mass appeal began in North America with the marketing of Perrier in the 1970s, but sales of still water have eclipsed the fizzy stuff, and billions and billions of dollars a year of it consumed annually. Bottled water became a status signifier - Cameron Diaz favoured Penta, Madonna preferred Voss artesian water. Jennifer Aniston and football hunk Tom Brady were recently hired to flog smartwater, bottled water infused with electrolytes.

Check out the shelves of your local supermarket or the bar of any restaurant and you’re likely to find water from all over the world. It might look and taste pure enough – but the appeal ends there. For a start, bottled water is indistinguishable from tap water. In many cases, it is even derived from municipal tap water and filtered – which is why PepsiCo has just agreed to add the words “public water source” to the label of Aquafina. Worse, shipping the stuff causes unnecessary environmental damage. Refrigeration wastes even more energy. And, of course, millions of plastic bottles end up in landfills.

Bottled water isn’t safer, either. The regulations governing the quality of public water supplies are far stricter than those governing bottled-water plants. The industry responds that it is selling “portable hydration” - but filling a bottle from the tap works just as well. In fact, bottled water would appear to be the ultimate marketing success: what else can you get people to pay so much for that is already available to them at a low cost in their own homes? We have already invested years and vast amounts of money into an ingenuous system that cleans water and delivers it, dirt cheap, to our homes and workplaces. Not only that, Canada has one of the largest supplies of drinking water in the world.

It would appear then, that the idea persists that there is something magically superior about bottled water. However, a backlash against bottled water is gathering pace as people realize just how crazy it is. And irresponsible, given the wastefulness of it in every aspect, especially since more than a billion people on the planet lack access to it.

For years, David Suzuki and company have railed against the environmental evils of bottled water - the pollution generated and energy expended in its production and shipping, the recyclable plastic bottles that rarely get recycled. Campaigns such as Think Outside the Bottle attack bottled water as part of a corporate conspiracy to seize control of the world’s water. UNICEF’s Tap Project uses the power of branding to promote tap water. For example, New York tap water has been rebranded “NY Tap” and, on World Water Day, participating restaurants in the city suggest a donation for the tap water they usually provide for free, with the proceeds going to water projects in developing countries.

Many fancy restaurants now proudly proclaim that they serve tap water, willing to forego the 300 percent plus markups on bottled water in return for increased customer loyalty, and restaurant patrons are increasingly prepared to ask unashamedly for tap water. More recently, church groups, including the United Church of Canada, have advocated that members boycott the product on the moral grounds that water is a basic human right, not a commodity to be sold for profit.

Tap water snobbery is even emerging. Born-again tap water aficionados argue it tastes better than many bottled offerings and state-of-the-art tap water filtration systems are a new bragging point. Coca-Cola uses municipal water from Calgary and Brampton, Ontario, for its Dasani brand. Pepsi trucks in municipal water from Vancouver or Mississauga for Aquafina, which is marketed as “the purest of waters.” Such claims justify massive markups. A litre (33.8 ounces) of tap water in Canada costs taxpayers an average of less than a tenth of a cent, according to Toronto’s city government.

Edmonton-based Earth Water, a national bottler of spring and osmosis water, forges an explicit connection between bottled-water consumption in affluent nations and the fragility of water supplies in developing nations: it donates net profits to the United Nations Refugee Agency, which runs water-aid programs.

Rick Smith, executive director of Toronto-based Environmental Defence, foresees a looming crisis, stating that not only is bottled water a complete disaster for the environment but potentially for human health. His greatest criticism lies with polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, the industry’s real product. “The production of one kilogram of PET requires 17.5 kilograms of water and results in air pollution emissions of over half a dozen significant pollutants,” says Smith. “In other words, the water required to create one plastic water bottle is significantly more than that bottle will contain.” In addition, an estimated 88 percent of water bottles are not recycled. The volatility of PET bottles, which should never be refilled due to risks of leaching and bacterial growth, remains uncertain. William Shotyk, a Canadian scientist working at the University of Heidelberg, released a study of 132 brands of bottled water in PET bottles stored for six months, and found that significant levels of antimony, a toxic chemical used in the bottle’s production, had leached into the water. Shotyk is now studying the bottles over a longer term, given the lag times that can occur between bottling, shipping, purchase and consumption.

Smith predicts concern about internal pollution will increase as more people are tested for chemical contamination. This year, Statistics Canada will begin testing 5,000 Canadians for a wide range of contaminants. Smith says “there’s empirical evidence that these plastic ingredients are now in the bodies of every citizen,” and he is quite sure that a few years from now “we will look back at these toxins and shake our heads and wonder, what the heck were we thinking?”

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