Fwd: Bottled water costs us the earth - report by Sunita Narain
Abhijit K
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Somu Kumar <Somu...@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 28, 2007 11:11 PM
Subject: [aimsindia] Bottled water costs us the earth - report by Sunita Narain
To: aims...@yahoogroups.com, youthforso...@googlegroups.com , yuvas...@yahoogroups.com, IH...@yahoogroups.com, bm_...@yahoogroups.com, sda...@yahoogroups.com
Dear All,
Please read this wonderful Report by Sunita Narain of CSE on the complex problems involved in Bottle water. It may seem simple, stylish & easy to drink bottle water but it will COST us our Earth soon. Please drink Public Water only and save our Earth. The Fear of safety on Public water is just created by these corporations to flourish their business; we been living on Public water for centuries and the system has only got better and we will be completely safe.
Let's take an oath today to "Stop drinking bottled water and drink only Public Water".
In Solidarity,
Somu
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Bottled water costs us the earth
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/editor.asp?foldername=20070831&filename=Editor&sec_id=2&sid=1
The botted water industry is global in nature. But it is designed to
sell the same product to two completely different markets: one water
rich and the other water scarce. The question is whether this industry
will have different outcomes in these two worlds. Or will we, for two
opposite reasons, agree that their business costs us the earth and that
it is not good for us?
In the water and economically-rich world, bottled water started as a
luxury—a non-essential item of desire, health and status. The water
came from fancy mountain streams: they were packaged and sold as
mineral-filled sparkling water. It was different from tap water and a
healthy (and snobbish) alternative to sweet and street smart colas. But
soon, the industry grew. In most cases, the companies sold water that
was not sourced from mountain springs but from public water: municipal
water sources. Once the snob habit was formed and the market created,
the companies simply packaged tap water in most cases into plastic
bottles and sold it from supermarkets.
Like nobody said the emperor had no clothes on. Nobody asked why they
were buying water for ten times the municipality's price. Call it a
great advertising success, but this non-essential industry is growing
exponentially. In 2006, Americans paid over us $11 billion to buy 31 billion litres of bottled water, and they are thirsting for more.
But the bubble is bursting. Last month, San Francisco's mayor banned
the use of bottled water in government buildings, incriminating
billions of disposed plastic bottles that filled landfills. In the us,
a staggering 60 million plastic bottles are thrown away each day, a
miniscule proportion of them are recycled. Greenhouse gas emission from
trucks which transported the bottles across the state—and often across
countries—was also a reason for the ban.
But equally
importantly, the mayor stressed that his city's municipal water came
from pristine sources inside a national park. This was as good, if not
better, than the bottled water sold by companies, he said.
He is not alone. Last year, Salt Lake City's mayor asked public
employees to stop supplying bottled water at official events. New York
has launched a us
$1 million campaign to encourage people to drink its famously clean
public water. Another slap has come from top-notch restaurants,
which—in reverse snobbery—are refusing to serve bottled water. The
worst is coming. Last week, junk food giant Pepsi was forced to admit
in the us that Aquafina, its bottled water,
is nothing more than tap water. It has agreed to label its bottles to
say what it doesn't want to: that Aquafina is tap water from a public
water source.
The bottled water industry is in damage control
mode. But I believe that this scream could easily become a shout as
people realise the environmental cost of this product and realise the
sheer stupidity of paying dearly for something that is cheaper and
readily available.
Bottled water is also growing big time in our world. India is said to
be the 10th largest bottled water consumer in the world. The demand has
increased from two million cases in 1990 to an estimated 68 million
cases by 2006. But in India, bottled water is growing as an item of
necessity: private industry is meeting the drinking water demand that
public utilities don't meet. People are paying prices that they cannot
afford because they have no alternative.
In India, this water does not come from municipal taps but from
groundwater. Companies simply drill a hole in the ground, pump and
clean (some-times) to bottle it and then transport it to cities. Simply
put, this is the privatisation of drinking water.
The business is a rip-off. Take for instance the case of Coca-Cola's
bottling plant in drought-prone Kala Dera near Jaipur. Coca-Cola gets
its water free except for a tiny cess (for discharging wastewater) it
pays to the state pollution control board: a little over Rs 5,000 a
year during 2000-02 and Rs 24,246 in 2003. It extracts half a million
litres of water every day—at a cost of 14 paise per 1,000 litres. In
other words, raw material costs of the Rs 12 per litre Kinley water
sold to you and me is just 0.02-0.03 paise.
Add to it treatment costs. Even with the state-of-the-art treatment
system with reverse osmosis and membranes, the cost of treatment is Rs
0.25 per litre at the most. Plastic bottle is what costs the
company—between Rs 3-4 for a one-litre container. Transportation—from
the bottling plant to our cities and homes—adds significantly to the
costs as does all the sales and advertising pitch. But add up all costs
and it is still a dream business, especially in a country with failing
public water supply.
The fact is that bottled water is no different from water that should
come from our taps. The only difference is it is packed in plastic and
not conveyed in pipelines. But, while the Indian rich can afford to buy
bottled water, the poor cannot. The rich have the choice and they opt
out of the failing municipal systems. What is forgotten is that Indian
water systems are failing because the rich in the country—who can
afford bottled water—are still supplied water at a tenth of what it
costs the municipality. Worse, our wastewater is conveyed and pumped
from our homes and even treated (at times). None of this cost is
recovered. In other words, it is our subsidy which is leading to poorer
and poorer delivery from water agencies. It is the rich, who have
options to drink bottled, who are failing the system.
I am not even talking here of the mountains of plastic waste, the
disposal of which isn't paid for. I am talking here of the imperative
that we should fix water for all in all taps. Water in bottles costs
the earth everywhere.
— Sunita Narain
--
The man who toils on the soil to feed the entire world is forced to commit suicide - What a Shame on Humanity!
Save Farmers, Save India.
http://andolan.blogspot.com/
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Abhijit Meenakshi
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