The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) has issued a press
release and video to rebuke the claims made in Annie Leonard's new video 'The Story of Bottled Water', released on World Water Day earlier this week. The IBWA is making several claims, none too impressive, to defend the bottled water industry. The most outlandish claim made was that the bottled water industry is helping consumers to be healthy, while tap water activists are discouraging the public from drinking water by scaring them. Bottled water is sold, no matter who's figures you use, at hundreds, if not thousands of times the price of tap water. I am not sure how extremely expensive water could possibly encourage people to drink it.
The IBWA also corrected Annie Leonard's Claim that plastic bottled have a 20% recycling rate with the real facts. Bottled water actually has a whopping 30.9% recycling rate. Additionally, they claim a third party analyst evaluated the bottled water life cycle this year and confirmed that "bottled water products have a very small environmental footprint" (with no additional details provided). For some reason none of this comes off as very compelling evidence for the case of bottled water.
The funniest part of their response is the "rival" Youtube video, complete with a fake journalist from "BWM Reports" posing questions to industry spokespeople about their environmental responsibility. Really? Are people supposed to be impressed by the "tough questions"? The video is below:
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