Recently in Bottled Water Category

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell took a stand for bottled water companies this week by reversing the state's ban on spending government funds on single serve water containers.

Many city and state governments around the country have taken bottled water out of their budgets in the last year to end wasteful spending on a product they often produce themselves.

Many city governments have been taking a closer look at the impact of plastic waste in their municipalities and the hypocrisy of having government workers purchase a product from the private sector that the government produces and often promotes to the public themselves.

Despite Gov. McDonnell's claim that he has lifted the ban in order to help Virginia's economy, it is very easy to suspect he is doing a little favor for the industry.

After all, the news was announced by the biggest bottled water lobby around, the International Bottled Water Association. They were very excited about his decision.

Tell Gov. McDonnell to take a step forward, not back.

UPDATE:
In our comments below, Tom Lauria, Vice President of Communications at the International Bottled Water Association informed us that the IBWA did not actually announce the decision of Governor McDonnell to reverse the state bottled water ban as stated in this post. Governor McDonnell announced the decision nearly 4 days earlier, to the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Peter Gleick, author of the new book 'Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water' interviewed yesterday on Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos on ABC about the rising issue of bottled water and what the country can do to fix it. Watch below:


 

According to Circle of Blue WaterNews, S2C Global Systems, a San Antonio, Texas based company in partnership with Alaska Resource Management LLC, will be exporting 2.9 billion gallons (10.9 billion liters) of water a year, from Alaska to Mumbai, India.

The operation is the first of its kind in that the water will be treated like other globally traded commodities to be shipped on ocean tankers.

Alaska Resource Management has struck a deal with the town of Sitka, Alaska to bulk extract water from the local resevior at 1 cent a gallon.

The water is planned to be shipped and offloaded in a Mumbai port, where it will be bottled into 2.5 to 5 liter containers and shipped around the region.

While states like California and Arizona ship their tap water from hundreds of miles away to meet demand, the concept of shipping water to be bottled thousands of miles, across oceans is new.

The trend of using a global water trade to solve local water purity issues is disturbing. It is highly unsustainable for many reasons to rely on water supplies from half way around the globe instead of working on the cleanliness of the local supply.

Foreign energy supplies are bad enough,  no one should be in the position of being dependent on foreign water.

For a range of public opinion on this subject, see this article at CircleofBlue.org.

Dave Matthews Band is teaming up with Filter for Good to attempt to rid their 2010 Summer Tour of bottled water. This is a huge challenge, as large concerts tend to be notorious trash producers.

Venues along the tour will be equipped with 'Hydration Hubs' where concert goers can get free reusable water bottles and fill up with filtered water. Visitors to the Hubs will get a chance to take the FilterForGood pledge and learn about other things they can do to reduce their environmental impact.

Concert goers will have the chance to recycle, 'offset' their carbon footprint from traveling to the event and learn about local environmental groups.

The band itself will be driving in biodiesel fueled buses offsetting any other carbon emissions associated with putting on the concerts.

"In our 20 years of tour greening, this will likely be the greenest tour of its size in history," said Michael Martin, CEO of EFFECT Partners who has been organizing the tour's sustainability plan.

Dave Matthews himself describes what the tour is trying to accomplish with it's green efforts (see video below).

 


photo credit: stephenyeargin under Creative Commons license

After an employee at C-crest Laboratories in Montreal experienced a funny taste in their bottled water, the lab decided to test a sampling of Canadian bottled waters.

The findings, which were presented at American Society of Microbiology in San Diego, showed that 70 percent of the Canadian bottled water were well above American standards of bacteria in bottled water.

In some cases the levels of Heterotrophic bacteria, which survive by eating organic matter were 100 times over the legal limit. While the researchers still do not know the exact kind of bacteria that was found in the bottled water, they called the results "disturbing".

On the bottled water industry side, there was unusually little surprise. Elizabeth Griswold of the Canadian Bottled Water Association sounded familiar with the problem. "My understanding is that heterotrophic plate count [bacterial level] is not pathogenic and does not pose a health risk."

While some brands had far more bacteria than others, the researchers have not listed the specific brands tested. More research is being done to find out how dangerous the bacteria is for human consumption.

'Tapped' is a great film directed by Stephanie Soechtig about the woes of bottled water (click here for the trailer). The film has been touring around the country this spring to spread the message about the problems of water privatization. Everyone should see this movie when they get a chance.

I just discovered that the Tapped crew has been putting out some great public service announcements about the world water crisis and bottled water. Check them out below. One of them includes a nice Jack Johnson cameo.

 I have included the links as they are perfect to pass along to friends. Keep spreading the word!


Share this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRkcxTK76_M


Share this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrj5QTv3_BU


Share this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXcLfBcZkxk


Share this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjIgvm3X5S4

The recent Boston water main brake has heightened the debate on how to fix America's aging water infrastructure.

Representative Earl Blumenauer from Oregon is trying to raise support for the The Water Protection and Reinvestment Act that, among other initiatives, taxes beverage bottlers, which would include water bottlers, who directly benefit from the county's clean water supplies.

The bill would aim to raise about $10 Billion a year to for water system repairs nationwide through a 4 cent per bottle tax.

Bottled water interests such as Nestle Waters North America  and the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) are taking issue with the bill and think the costs should not rest so heavily on their industry. IBWA spokesmen Tom Lauria said in a statement, "The Blumenauer bill is singling out one product unfairly and disproportionately, and it's not going to solve the problem."

Unfortunately, an estimated 40% of bottled water comes from municipal sources. So, many of the companies opposing a water infrastructure tax have a business model dependent on public water systems to make money. Should they be obligated to pay?

To find out more information on the bill click here. To tell congress you support new funding for water infrastructure, click here.

photo credit: dipfan on flickr creative commons

The first American town has fully banned the sale of bottled water. Concord, Massachusetts the historic landmark and suburb of Boston, has followed the lead of Bundanoon, Australia to become completely bottled water free.

The ban came out of a vote at a town meeting in late April. Much of the momentum for the bill was conjured up by 82 year old activist Jean Hill. "All these discarded bottles are damaging our planet, causing clumps of garbage in the oceans that hurt fish, and are creating more pollution on our streets,'' says Hill. She lobbied her neighbors and aquantences for months to finally get the issue to be addressed at the town meeting.

This is a surprising turn of events for the bottled water industry, and the ban is getting national attention. Joe Dess of the International Bottled Water Association issued a statement: "Any efforts to discourage consumers from drinking water, whether tap water or bottled water, is not in the best interests of consumers. Bottled water is a very healthy, safe, convenient product that consumers use to stay hydrated."

Many people are beginning to see the major downsides to having bottled water be a replacement for the public supply. This does not look good for the water bottlers.

Concord did face an immediate challenge when a water main broke in the Boston Area putting all the town on boil notice. Emergency situations provide one of the few arguments water bottlers have that they provide a valuable product (although single serve containers still don't serve a practical purpose, even in emergencies). Many in the town began to doubt how wise the bottled water ban was.

Jean Hill was not perturbed. "I have no second thoughts about this vote. The problem is that when there isn't a crisis, too many people use bottled water instead of tap water". Well put.

Residents of Paw Paw, Michigan are suing Coca-Cola for contaminating their ground water with heavy metals. The suit alleges that wastewater discharged from a local Minute Maid juice plant run by Coca-Cola has allowed heavy metals to seep into the water table.

Residents are suing for damages related to reduced property value and the cost of cleaning up the contamination. Some plaintiffs in the suit allege health issues, including gastrointestinal, kidney and central nervous system disorders from drinking local water.

Coca-Cola agrees with the the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment that the groundwater does indeed contain heavy metals and has taken steps to remedy the problem.

As part of the plan, which has included building a water treatment plant, Coca-Cola has quite ironically been providing as much as 20 residents with free bottled water for over a year, as a precaution.

So Coca-Cola basically ruins Paw Paw's water and then offers them Dasani? This is an accidental yet telling illustration of the problems of bottled water.

photo credit: quaziefoto from flickr creative commons

 

The movement against bottled water is heating up, especially in Canada. Brita, the maker of filters for the home and office, launched a $2 Million marketing campaign in Canada.

Brita will be airing a 60 second commercial (see video below) that will be play on various prime time shows in Canada, such as American Idol, CSI, The Mentalist and The Biggest Loser.

Clearly getting rid of disposable water bottles is gaining momentum in Canada with Ottawa's new million dollar tap water marketing budget and University of Ottawa's recent bottled water ban. We hope to see this happen everywhere.