tagged w/ bottled water is a scam
-
I saw a piece on this guy in NY selling bottled water and using the money to get clean water in Africa. the was bottle said "Charity.org or com" but both don't get me to him can anyone help?I saw a piece on this guy in NY selling bottled water and using the money to get clean... more
-
-
States in the Northeast have set aside or spent between $228,874 and $527,107 a year for bottled water, according to a new report Getting States Off the Bottle released today by Corporate Accountability International. The states surveyed include four Northeastern states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Pennsylvania – all known for their high quality tap water.
The findings come as public water systems face a $24 billion annual shortfall, and during financial times where states can ill afford to be spending public dollars on such a non-essential use of an essential public resource.
“Not only is the spending patently wasteful at a time when states can not afford unnecessary expenses, but it broadcasts the absolute wrong message about our high quality tap water,” said Connecticut State Representative Richard Roy, Chair of the House Environmental Committee.
Roy is one of hundreds of public officials nationwide that are now calling for taxpayer dollars to cease flowing to bottled water. In 2008, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, representing more than 1200 mayors, passed a resolution encouraging mayors to phase out city spending on bottled water. To date, more than 100 cities have taken action to cut spending on bottled water or support public water systems as well as three states, including Illinois, Virginia and New York.
Governors and mayors are stewards of public water systems, responsible for overseeing budgets that provide the overwhelming majority of public funding for this essential public service. But the need for greater investment in these systems is growing rapidly, while public fundings for these systems languishes.
A major cause of the gap in funding has been the marketing and promotion of bottled water. Marketing campaigns, such as Nestlé’s Born Better, have convinced one in five people to believe the only place to get clean drinking water is from a bottle. And as public confidence in tap water has waned, so too has the political will to invest in public water.
“Swift action by governors to cut bottled water spending can be a strong first step in restoring public water systems and the public’s confidence in them,” said Kelle Louaillier, executive director of Corporate Accountability International.
After all, up to forty percent of bottled water sold comes from the same source as tap water. Tap water is also more highly regulated than what comes in the bottle.
Public education campaigns like Think Outside the Bottle are, however, restoring confidence in public water systems. A recent Harris Poll found that 29 percent of people switched from bottled to tap water in the last year. An overall decline in the North American bottled water market reflects this shift in behavior and attitude toward the tap. However, state action is still lagging. While each state profiled in the report has taken some steps to allocate funding towards water infrastructure – such as dedicating funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to water systems – even these steps are a drop in the bucket compared to what will be needed to close the gap.
“During these tough economic times our states need to be thinking, ‘we should only spend scarce public dollars on projects that grow the economy at large not just the bottom line for a handful of private corporations,’” said Louaillier. “Investment in public water is, in this respect, one of the wisest investments we can make.”
According to a U.S. Conference of Mayors report, every dollar invested in public water generates more than six for the economy at large in the long term.
For the full report visit www.StopCorporateAbuse.org/GettingStatesOffTheBottleStates in the Northeast have set aside or spent between $228,874 and $527,107 a year... more
-
-
Evian Natural Spring Water is looking to break-dancing babies to energize its brand. The upscale water brand this week is launching its new “Live young” global advertising campaign. The ads, which will appear online in the U.S. and on TV in some overseas markets, look to project the brand's values of health, youth and purity in a more playful way than in the past.
Evian has been struggling during the recession in the U.S. Its sales volume sank 17 percent in 2008, per Beverage Digest. Evian holds only 0.6 percent of the bottled water market. With its high price, premium brands of bottled water like Evian are showing dwindling returns, said John Sicher, editor of Beverage Digest. “Evian has been flattish to down in recent years mainly because the category has moved more towards mid- to low-price brands.”
Evian is hoping for a viral hit on the Web to launch the campaign in the U.S. It is posting the ad on YouTube as well as initiating a new Web site www.evianliveyoung.com dedicated to the campaign. Visitors can view two videos, digital teasers of break-dancing babies and “making-of” clips. “Interviews” with a few of the 96 babies filmed will be available, as well as links to Facebook pages created for the infants.
In the ad, the message “Let’s observe the effect of Evian on your body” appears, followed by lively and happy babies break-dancing on roller skates to a remix of the classic track “Rapper’s Delight” by hip-hop producer Dan the Automater. Euro RSCG is the agency.
“The Web today has changed the way we communicate and in launching this campaign virally it allows Evian, a global brand, to reach consumers worldwide in a way that traditional media cannot,” said Jerome Goure, vice president of marketing for Danone Waters of America, the importer and marketer of Evian in North America.Evian Natural Spring Water is looking to break-dancing babies to energize its brand.... more
-
-
Bottled water is widely considered to be a purer choice than tap water, but a new investigation finds that this isn't always the case.
In its test of 10 best-selling brands of bottled water, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found mixtures of 38 different pollutants including bacteria, fertilizer, and industrial chemicals in some of the tested brands at levels that were similar to tap water.
Several samples of Wal-Mart's Sam's Choice brand sold in California were found to exceed that state's legal limits of contaminants for bottled water.
"The bottled water industry really presents this image of purity, but our investigation demonstrated that it is really hit or miss," EWG senior scientist Olga Naidenko, PhD, tells WebMD. "We found a lot of variation among the same brands which suggests that at the moment consumers can not have confidence in their water."
But a spokesman for the bottled water industry denies the charge and accuses EWG of using "alarmist tactics."
"In general, the report is based on the faulty premise that if any substance is present in a bottled water product, even if it does not exceed the established regulatory limit or no standard has been set, then it's a health concern," International Bottled Water Association President and CEO Joe Doss says in a statement.
In an earlier interview before the release of the report, Doss told WebMD that "consumers can remain confident about drinking bottled water, which is a very safe, healthy, convenient product."
Testing Bottled Water
The water samples tested for EWG at a University of Iowa water quality laboratory revealed that 10 widely sold brands of bottled water, purchased in nine states and the District of Columbia, contained an average of eight chemical contaminants in each brand.
Two of the waters -- Wal-Mart's Sam's Choice and Giant grocery's Acadia brand -- bore the chemical signatures of the municipal water treatment plants in the areas where they were bottled.
Investigators concluded that the Sam's Choice samples sold in Oakland, Calif. and Mountain View, Calif. had been bottled at a single plant in Las Vegas.
The mix of contaminants and contamination levels were the same as in the local municipal water, indicating that little had been done to further purify the water after it was taken from the tap.
By law, bottled water that comes from a municipal water supply has to disclose this on its label, unless the bottler takes steps to further purify the water.
"Clearly, you would not expect to see the level of chemical that the samples had if the extra purification had been done," Naidenko says.
Specifically, the investigators found that:
Five of the tested waters contained fluoride, six contained small amounts of the fertilizer ingredient nitrate, and two contained the drug acetaminophen, sold as Tylenol.
Samples of the Sam's Choice water purchased at a San Francisco area Wal-Mart had levels of the disinfection byproducts trihalomethanes that exceeded the California legal limit for these chemicals.
Samples of the Sam's Choice brand also had higher-than-allowed levels of the chemical bromodichloromethane, which is a known carcinogen.
Samples of Giant's Acadia brand water also had levels of the chemicals that exceeded California safety standards, although the brand was sold only in mid-Atlantic states, where it met standards.
The report noted that levels of the chemicals in both waters also exceeded the bottled water industry's voluntary safety standards.Bottled water is widely considered to be a purer choice than tap water, but a new... more
-
-
Attorney General Jerry Brown on Tuesday said he will sue to block a proposed water-bottling operation in Northern California unless its effects on global warming are evaluated.
Nestle Waters North America wants to pump about 200 million gallons of water a year from three natural springs that supply McCloud, about 280 miles north of San Francisco. Brown's office said that's enough to fill 3.1 billion 8-ounce plastic water bottles.
The water would be bottled at a 350,000-square-foot facility on the outskirts of the former lumber town.
The Swiss-based company scaled back its plans in May after years of opposition from environmentalists and a group of McCloud residents. It originally sought to pump more than double the amount of water.
David Palais, Nestle's Northern California natural resource manager, said the company already was planning studies on air and water quality, hazardous materials, traffic conditions and climate change for a new environmental review of the bottling plant.
"We appreciate the attorney general's letter and share his commitment to ensuring that new projects in California do not negatively impact the environment," Palais said in a statement.
He said the company will conduct environmental studies over the next two or three years. Afterward, Siskiyou County will prepare a new environmental impact report for the project.
Brown said the company must put its revisions into a new contract with the town of McCloud. He wants proper study of the environmental consequences of the bottling operation, saying the previous draft review had "serious deficiencies."
He said it failed to include an examination of whether the operation will contribute to global warming through the production of plastic bottles, the operation's electrical demands and the diesel soot and greenhouse gas emissions produced by trucks traveling to and from the plant.
"It takes massive quantities of oil to produce plastic water bottles and to ship them in diesel trucks across the United States," Brown said in a statement. "Nestle will face swift legal challenge if it does not fully evaluate the environmental impact of diverting millions of gallons of spring water from the McCloud River into billions of plastic water bottles."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This boggles my mind. California is in a drought in most of the state with more wildfires reported this year, and all Nestle can think of is pumping millions of gallons of water from a spring to put it in plastic bottles to make a profit from it? Another company without a moral center! Attorney General Jerry Brown on Tuesday said he will sue to block a proposed... more
-
-
Plastic water bottles produced for U.S. consumption take 1.5 million barrels of oil per year, according to a 2007 resolution passed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. That much energy could power 250,000 homes or fuel 100,000 cars for a year, according to the resolution.
Cornell University professor and environmentalist Doug James said the irony of bottled water is that it's marketed as clean and healthy when its production contributes to unnecessary environmental degradation.
"Fiji water, for example," he said. "A one-liter bottle is taken out of the aquifer of this little island, and shipped all the way across the world, producing like half a pound of greenhouse gases so you can have this one-liter bottle of water."
The taste question
Another obvious issue in the consumption of bottled water is taste.
In some areas, tap water simply isn't drinkable, Brown said, and in those situations, bottled water is a useful resource.
Other consumers simply prefer the taste of bottled water, Lauria said.
"Consumers have lots of preferences and some people want mineral water for taste," he said. "Everyone has their own reasons for buying products. And some people have a preference for bottled water."
But, Brown argues, perceptions about the taste of tap water and realities about the taste of tap water can be very different things.
To test her hypothesis that tap water tastes as least as good as bottled water, Brown has been conducting a series of taste tests at Ithaca College in the past year.
In five blind taste tests over the last year, the tap water has won four times, she said.
The growth in advertising and consumption of bottled water has occurred "frankly, since the big soda companies bought up water," she said. "They would buy up the Dasanis, and they would buy up the Poland Springs, and you get into the huge marketing machines of the major soda industries, Coke and Pepsi, notably, and they take it to a whole different field."
Water and waste
Then there's the waste stream.
In roughly the last 10 years, the amount of polyethylene terephthalate plastic bottles being recycled increased from about 775 million pounds in 1995 to about 1,170 million in 2005, according to the Container Recycling Institute.
But during the same time period, the amount of PET bottles going into landfills skyrocketed from 1,175 million to 3,900 million pounds.
Water bottles are a big part of that problem, Brown says, because there are so many more of them, and because in many states, water bottles don't have a redemption value like soda and beer bottles do.
Lauria said the focus on water bottles is unfair because they make up "less than one-third of one percent" of the entire U.S. waste stream.
"There are many other plastic objects that are in our lives that no one seems to be concerned about and yet it all needs to be recycled," he said. "As you recycle bottled water you should also recycle many other products that are in your refrigerator when you're done with them."
~~~~~~~~~~
1.4 billion people worldwide are without potable water, while FIJI water is taken and transported around the world for profit at great environmental cost as women and girls in Africa risk their lives to walk up to nine hours a day to collect only enough jugs of polluted water to last one day for a family of four to six people.There is no moral justice to that at all. And while yes, it is very good to cut as much plastic waste in bottles, bags, etc. as you can, water bottles are targeted because they are an unnecessary waste and because study after study has shown that bottled water is no better than tap water in many cases. Corporations also wish to commoditize and privitize water which is a human right to make it a product on the open market like oil. This is simply something we must not allow to happen especially in wake of the climate crisis that is causing water scarcity and food shortages.Plastic water bottles produced for U.S. consumption take 1.5 million barrels of oil... more
-
