Pepsi Forced to Admit It's Bottling Tap Water
Abhijit K
From: nityanand jayaraman <nit...@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 6, 2007 6:53 AM
Subject: {Youth for Social Ch Pepsi Forced to Admit It's Bottling Tap Water
To: youthforso...@googlegroups.com
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=13439§ionID=13
ZNet | Corporate Globalization
Pepsi Forced to Admit It's Bottling Tap Water
by Amy Goodman; Alternet; August 03, 2007
AMY GOODMAN: The soft drink giant Pepsi has been forced to
make an embarrassing admission: Its bestselling Aquafina bottled water
is nothing more than tap water. Last week, Pepsi agreed to change the
labels of Aquafina to indicate the water comes from a public water
source. Pepsi agreed to change its label under pressure from the
advocacy group Corporate Accountability International, which has been
leading an increasingly successful campaign against bottled water.
In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom recently banned city
departments from using city money to buy any kind of bottled water. In
New York, local residents are being urged to drink tap water. The U.S.
Conference of Mayors has passed a resolution that highlighted the
importance of municipal water and called for more scrutiny of the
impact of bottled water on city waste.
The environmental impact of the country's obsession with
bottled water has been staggering. Each day an estimated 60 million
plastic water bottles are thrown away. Most are not recycled. The
Pacific Institute has estimated 20 million barrels of oil are used
each year to make the plastic for water bottles.
Economically, it makes sense to stop buying bottled water as
well. The Arizona Daily Star recently examined the cost difference
between bottled water and water from the city's municipal supply. A
half-liter of Pepsi's Aquafina at a Tucson convenience store costs
$1.39. The bottle contains purified water from the Tucson water
supply. From the tap, you can pour over 6.4 gallons for a penny. That
makes the bottled stuff about 7,000 times more expensive, even though
Aquafina is using the same water source.
Gigi Kellett of Corporate Accountability International joins
us in Boston, the group spearheading the Think Outside the Bottle
campaign. We're also joined by freelance writer Michael Blanding. Last
year he wrote an article for Alternet.org called "The Bottled Water
Lie." We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
I want to begin with Gigi Kellett. Talk about Pepsi's admission.
GIGI KELLETT: Well, after a couple of years of our Think
Outside the Bottle campaign, we have been asking of the bottled water
corporations to come clean about where they get their water, what is
the source of the water that they're bottling, because most people
don't know that Pepsi's Aquafina, Coke's Dasani, come from our public
water systems. And so, after thousands of phone calls, thousands of
public comments submitted to the corporation, and us taking these
demands directly to the corporation's annual shareholder meeting this
year, Pepsi last week made the announcement that it would reveal that
it gets its water from our public water systems.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, where exactly does Pepsi get it? Which
public water supply?
GIGI KELLETT: Well, that is the issue that we're really
looking at next, is what cities are they bottling the water in. You
know, here in Massachusetts, it's coming from Ayre, Mass. So we want
to make sure that on those bottles it says: "Public water source:
Ayre, Massachusetts." That way, people know exactly what they're
getting when they're buying that Aquafina bottled water.
AMY GOODMAN: Ayre being the name of a town in Massachusetts.
GIGI KELLETT: Ayre is the name of a town, right. Exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happens to the town? They have their
public water supply, and they have the plant for Pepsi?
GIGI KELLETT: That's right. We want to make sure that -- you
know, Pepsi has certainly taken a lead on this for the bottled water
industry, and we want to make sure that Coke and Nestle also follow
suit. One of the things that we're finding as we're talking to people
about this issue on the street is that they don't know where the water
is coming from. And the bottled water corporations have spent tens of
millions of dollars on ads that make people think that bottled water
is somehow better, cleaner, safer than our public water systems. And
in reality, we know that that's not true. And so, we want to make sure
that we're increasing our people's confidence in their public water
systems once again and knowing that we need to be investing in our
public systems.
AMY GOODMAN: Gigi, can you go further on who owns what? You
mention Nestle. What does Nestle own?
GIGI KELLETT: Nestle owns several dozen brands of bottled
water. The bottled water brand they source from our public water
systems is called Nestle Pure Life. They also own Poland Spring,
Ozarka, Arrowhead. The list goes on. And regionally, it's distributed
across the country. And then we also have Coca-Cola, which bottles
Dasani water, and, of course, Pepsi with Aquafina.
AMY GOODMAN: And when it comes to being tap water, what is the
difference between plain tap water and distilled water from these
public sources.
GIGI KELLETT: Well, there's very little difference. You know,
our public water systems go through a very rigorous testing and
monitoring system and is tested by the Environmental Protection
Agency. So we want to make sure that people know that our public water
systems are much better regulated than these bottled water brands,
which don't have to go through the same rigorous type of process.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Gigi Kellett, associate
campaigns director of Corporate Accountability International. Michael
Blanding, a freelance writer, has written the piece "The Bottled Water
Lie." Michael, what is the lie?
MICHAEL BLANDING: Well, there are actually several lies, I
think, that the bottled water companies perpetrate, but I think the
main one is exactly what Gigi said, that this image bolstered by, you
know, millions and millions of dollars of advertising that bottled
water is somehow better for you, it tastes better, it's more pure. And
in many cases, that's simply not true. People are paying enormous
premiums for bottled water and don't even realize the fact that in
many cases not only does tap water taste the same, but that it's
actually more tightly regulated and actually healthier for you. There
have been, you know, several cases of bottled water that's actually
been contaminated and found to contain hazardous chemicals. And tap
water, there's actually a rigorous testing and monitoring of the water
supply that actually in many cases makes it healthier.
AMY GOODMAN: When we come back from break, I want to talk
about some of those cases of contamination, but also talk about the
community struggles that are working to take back their water supply.
Our guests are Michael Blanding, who wrote "The Bottled Water Lie,"
and Gigi Kellett of Corporate Accountability International. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Michael, you begin your piece by talking
about Antonia Mahoney. Talk about who she is.
MICHAEL BLANDING: She was someone who was just walking down
the street in downtown Boston when the folks at Corporate
Accountability -- Gigi and the folks in her group -- were holding
something called the Tap Water Challenge, which was a taste test
between tap water and various bottled water brands, Aquafina and
Dasani. And I stood there during the afternoon and watched many people
come up who were bottled water drinkers and could swear that they
could tell the difference and that they could recognize their brand.
And Antonia Mahoney was one of those who -- she actually had
given off drinking tap water a few years ago and was drinking only
Poland Spring and knew that she would be able to tell Poland Spring
from all the other types of water that she was drinking there. And it
turned out that what she thought was Poland Spring was actually the
tap water from Boston, the good old tap water, which -- we actually
have very good tap water that comes from western Mass here. So she was
very surprised and shocked, and decided right there that she was going
to leave off her contract of paying $30 a month for Poland Spring
water, which she got delivered to her house. So it was very -- and
there were other experiences like that during the day that I witnessed.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael, you write about the problems of a
suspected carcinogen chemical, bromate. You talk about the
contamination of Dasani water, owned by Coca-Cola, in 2004. Explain
what the problems are, the contamination issues.
MICHAEL BLANDING: So, ironically, one of the processes that
actually takes the tap water and purifies it -- it's called ozonation
-- can actually in some cases have a byproduct, which is bromate,
which is, as you say, a suspected carcinogen. And the largest case of
contamination was in the U.K. in 2004, right when Dasani launched in
the United Kingdom. They had something like a half-million bottles of
Dasani water actually found to be contaminated, and people were
getting sick. And it's just indicative of the lack of controls and the
lack of monitoring that you find with bottled water.
And it's not an isolated case. There have been many others
that have occurred. Most recently up in Upstate New York, with an
independent bottled water company, there were multiple cases of
bromate contamination, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the issue of filtering? First
of all, I don't know if people realize when something says "public
water source" that it means tap water. But then, what it means for
that tap water to be filtered -- you talk about additional techniques
like reverse-osmosis.
MICHAEL BLANDING: Right, yeah. So there are various techniques
that the companies use, and they tout them as these proprietary
techniques that they go through seven different phases of filtering,
and all the rest of it. And when you look at it, though -- reverse
osmosis is the main one, which is basically just pushing water through
a membrane to remove contaminants, and it's actually very similar to
the type of process that can be found in home water filters, just the
kind that you attach to your tap for a couple of hundred bucks. So --
it's not as sophisticated as they might pretend that it is.
AMY GOODMAN: And internationally, the movements, from Bolivia
to Peru, La Paz, all over.
MICHAEL BLANDING: Yeah. What's interesting is that, here in
the United States, there are several communities that have actually
had plants take a lot of water from their groundwater up in Michigan
where they can actually see the water level of one of their streams
declining because of the massive amount that Nestle was taking from
their water.
And it's even a more critical issue in other countries where
water scarcity is a real problem, so places like India, where
Coca-Cola and Pepsi have actually really depleted communities, and
farmers have been unable to grow their crops, it's kind of been a
double whammy. They've taken the water, and then the water that they
-- the waste water they've dumped back has been polluted, in many
cases. And so, that's one issue, is just the depletion of water from
the plants themselves.
And then the other issue, which I know Gigi could talk about,
is just the perception that comes across that somehow tap water is --
municipal water is somehow not as good as water that's been
privatized. And so, you have -- it sort of starts this steady creep of
where privatization of water sources becomes OK. And there have been
many communities, like in Bolivia, where water supplies have been
privatized and have been sold back to -- water that was previously
free has, you know, skyrocketed in price. And people have taken to the
streets and protested and actually got the private companies to leave.
AMY GOODMAN: Gigi Kellett, let's talk about the tainting of
the image of the municipal water supply in this country, the effect of
the bottled water advertising industry campaigns.
GIGI KELLETT: Well, this is something that's of real concern
to our organization and our members and activists across the country,
because we are seeing this -- who are we turning to to provide our
drinking water? And there are -- these bottled water corporations are
spending tens of millions of dollars every year on ads that
effectively undermine people's confidence in their water.
There was actually a poll done by the University of Arkansas
earlier this year that found young people tend to choose bottled water
over tap water, because they feel it's somehow cleaner or better than
their public water systems. And as we've already mentioned here, we
know that in reality that's not true. So there is a real concern about
the impact that these bottled water corporations are having on the way
we think about water.
And our Think Outside the Bottle campaign is aiming to change
that, and we're having real success with cities like San Francisco and
Ann Arbor, Mich., and New York City, taking a lead on putting their
public water systems back in the forefront and not contracting with
bottled water corporations, for example, like in Salt Lake City and in
San Francisco. And we're seeing restaurants turn to the tap in lieu of
bottled water. So there's a lot that people are starting to look at in
terms of this industry and what changes we can make to promote our own
public water systems here in this country and make sure that they have
the funding they need to thrive, and that also we're looking
internationally to make sure that countries that may be cash-strapped
also have the resources they need to have good, strong public water
systems and not turn to privatization.
AMY GOODMAN: Gigi, tell us about what happened in Salt Lake
City and in San Francisco, with the mayor announcing that city money
cannot be used to buy bottled water.
GIGI KELLETT: That's right. You know, the mayor of San
Francisco, Gavin Newsom, after we had been working with his staff
there, working with the San Francisco Department of the Environment
and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, they looked at how
much money they were spending on bottled water every year. It was
close to a half-million dollars. And they said, "We're the forefront.
We're cities. We're the forefront of ensuring that people have access
to good, safe, clean water. And we're also now at the forefront of
dealing with the waste that results from the bottled water industry.
So we need to take a stand as a city." And in June, Mayor Newsom
issued an executive order saying that the city would no longer be
buying bottled water. And he joined with the mayor of Salt Lake City,
Rocky Anderson, and also the mayor of Minneapolis, R.T. Rybak, to put
forward a resolution at the U.S. Conference of Mayors calling on a
study to really look at what are the impacts of bottled water on our
municipal waste. So it's a real great leadership that we're seeing of
these cities.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Gigi, what about the effect that the water
in the plastic bottle has? Is there any kind of leeching out? People
think that they're getting healthier water in all sorts of ways, but
what about the impact of that plastic?
GIGI KELLETT: Well, there are a number of concerns about the
impact of the plastic, yes, of course, in the leeching. These bottles
that are made are single-serve bottles, so they're not intended to be
reused, because of the potential for leeching of the plastic into --
when you're drinking the water. And then, of course, there are the
environmental impacts of the bottles that are ending up in our
landfills and on the side of the road as litter. They're not being
recycled. Only about 23 percent of these plastic bottles are being
recycled. So it's a huge impact for our environment and, of course,
for people's health. So we want people to be looking at turning back
to the tap and thinking outside the bottle.
Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio
news program, Democracy Now!
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