PROFIT IN A BOTTLE

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 29 Jul 2009

Dahlia El-Shafei

Review of the New Documentary ‘Tapped ‘ About the Bottled Water Industry

THERE IS unarguably a trend in mass media to promote a "green" lifestyle, and the propagators are cleverly shifting strategies to divert blame and responsibility. Not to mention convincing us to buy more products to keep up with the new social standards.

Drive down the street in your brand-new Prius, take a bag made from recycled materials on your next shopping trip, and always carry bottled water. Tapped, the new film from directors Stephanie Soechtig and Jason Lindsey, dispels the notion that drinking bottled water is part of a healthy life, and proves how it is damaging our health and the future of our planet’s resources.

Elizabeth Royte, author of Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It, calls bottled water "an unparalleled social phenomenon, one of the greatest marketing coups of the 20th and 21st century." Solely driven by diverting public resources for private profit, the bottled water industry appropriates a human right and turns it into a commodity.

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IN LATE 1980s, an aggressive campaign to market bottled water started with Perrier (now owned by Nestle Waters) promoting a "healthy alternative" to soda. Now a $60 billion-a-year industry, bottled water sales have surpassed beer and milk. With the UN valuing the water market at $800 billion, the struggle is raging against corporations to keep resources for the common good, protect vulnerable populations and ensure the safety of our ecosystems.

As one of the most pervasive and fastest-growing industries, the plastic bottles alone account for more than 17 million barrels of oil used last year to cater to the American market. The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that the 43 million gallons of imported water traveled 3,500 miles and created 3,800 tons of carbon dioxide; the 1 million gallons imported from Fiji created an additional 190 tons.

Not included in the report are the emissions from the bottled water that is exported every year–about 2.5 billion gallons, or a third of the total amount bottled in the U.S. Of all the environmental damage that bottled water does, 90 percent of the impact happens before it even gets to the consumer.

The damage incurred through water mining is grave and irreparable. This is not, as many would have you believe, part of a cyclical drought. We have thwarted the hydrologic cycle off its course to such an extreme that, according to Maude Barlow, senior advisor on water issues to the president of the United Nations General Assembly, "this is the end of water in many parts of the world unless we change our behavior."

Only in a capitalist country where 89 percent of our free tap water meets or exceeds standards set forth by the federal health and safety regulations would we buy into the need for bottled water.

The unsustainable practices are not only wrenching water from the public to keep up with consumer demand. In addition to the water extracted to fill the bottles, recent findings from the World Watch Institute show that it takes 17.5 kilograms of water just to produce one kilogram of plastic used to make the bottles.

Instead of spending money on improving water infrastructure or conservation, corporations are investing in new desalination technology. And who has cornered the market for this new technology? None other than General Electric, ranked Number Six in the Fortune 500 list of largest American corporations.

It’s clear that corporations are far more interested in lining their pockets and their friends’ pockets than supporting fair and sustainable practices. This was enforced this spring when New York Gov. David Paterson proposed an expanded bottle bill that would require manufacturers to pay a 5-cent deposit on non-carbonated beverages.

Since 1982, New York has had a bottle bill on beer and other carbonated beverages that, according to New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, have reduced litter 70 percent.

Nestle Waters, one of the leading manufacturers of bottled water, along with two other manufacturers, sued the state of New York to get the bill removed citing it as "unfair" and even "unconstitutional." When the bill was brought to legislature, it passed with a few changes–it would not included beverages with added sugar.

Although Nestle and its cohorts weren’t successful at getting bottled water off the bill, they did ensure that the financial burden wouldn’t be passed to their cronies in the agribusiness–specifically the industry heavyweights that supply over 90 percent of the nations corn, the main ingredient in added sweeteners.

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TAPPED EXPOSES the bottled water industry as an irresponsible, unregulated and unequal system with infinite resources. So what are the alternatives to leaving our resources and rights in the hands of corporations that are only accountable to shareholders?

The film is empowering, as it’s not an exhaustive report on the global water crisis or an exposé on the corporate exploitation of our resources, but focuses on the different communities affected by the bottle water industry in the U.S. Soechtig and Lindsey combine in-depth interviews and staggering statistics to illustrate the struggles ahead.

The film begins in Fryeburg, Maine, where the silent takeover of the community’s aquifer by Nestle is underway. There, citizens are coming up against small town government that adheres to Absolute Dominion, the law that states whoever owns the land is entitled to all of its resources under the surface.

The state operates much in the same way as the private sector, granting free reign to those that can pay. During a drought in February 2004, restrictions on water usage were placed on the citizens of Fryeburg, but Nestle was granted access to pump as much as 400,000 gallons a day. During that time, the state enabled Nestle to avoid the proposed 1 cent-per-gallon tax based on the argument that if they paid the tax, they wouldn’t survive economically. For a company that netted an estimated $110 billion in 2008, it’s hard to believe that claim.

In Corpus Christi, Texas, home to one of the largest oil refineries, many of the citizens are ill. In one story, we learn about a woman who died from cancer related to benzene, a powerful ingredient produced in the refinery that’s used to make plastic water bottles and leaches into the towns air and water supply.

In over 200 independent studies of bottled water, scientists found not only benzene but also many other chemicals related to liver disease, lung disease, diabetes, cancer and complications with reproductive organs. But the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate water that is extracted and sold within the same state, approximately 70 percent of all bottled water sales. When they do test and regulate the water, they use information based on tests provided by the chemical companies themselves.

Perhaps the most stunning and disturbing portion of the film focuses on the ocean. The North Pacific Garbage Patch, twice the size of Texas, floats between San Francisco and Hawaii and is our virtual dumping ground for plastic bottles. In 1994, scientists discerned that there was four times the amount of plastic to plankton; in 2004, 46 times.

From the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car, and I.O.U.S.A, Tapped is a cohesive and engaging argument that demonstrates the need to abolish the present system of exploiting people and the planet.

We need to build a movement with a collective vision that addresses the needs of society while respecting the planet’s resources. To learn more or to organize a screening of the movie go to the Tapped Web site. 

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