The Story of Bottled Water

Imagine I was trying to sell you a sandwich. It's shrink wrapped in plastic that may leach toxic chemicals, but don't worry about that. Mine's still healthier than a sandwich you could make at home, what with all those impurities in your fridge. Now, I've got no proof of that, and actually, some people have tested my sandwiches and found that sometimes they have more bad stuff in them than the ones from your own kitchen. But never mind that. Mine's more convenient. Tastes better too. I swear.

So here you go: one plastic-wrapped, waste-producing sandwich that isn't any healthier and doesn't taste any better than the one from your own kitchen. That'll be $10,000, please.

That preposterous pitch is the truth behind the marketing campaigns that turned bottled water into a $5 billion-a-year industry in the United States alone. Today is World Water Day--a good day to pause and consider the insanity of a global economy where 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water while other people spend billions on a bottled product that's no cleaner, harms people and the environment and costs up to 2,000 times the price of tap water.

To mark the occasion, I'm joining with a bunch of North America's leading environmental groups to release our new film: The Story of Bottled Water. It's a seven-minute animated film that, like The Story of Stuff, uses simple images and words to explain a complex problem caused by what I call the 'take-make-waste' economy. In this case, we explain how you get Americans to buy half a billion bottles of water a week when most can get it almost free from the tap in their kitchen.


The answer, of course, is you manufacture demand--make people think they need to spend money on something they don't actually need or already have.

In the last few decades, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle and other big beverage companies have spent untold millions making us afraid of tap water. They've told us that if we want to be sure what we drink is pure and clean--not to mention hip and fashionable--we should buy bottled water. After all, nobody cool or environmentally conscious drinks tap water, right?

The thing is, there are a lot of inconvenient truths the bottled water ads don't mention:

• Bottled water is subject to fewer health regulations than tap water. In 2006, Fiji Water ran ads bragging that their product doesn't come from Cleveland, only to have tests show a glass of Fiji water is lower quality than Cleveland tap. Oops!

• Up to 40 percent of bottled water is filtered tap water. In other words, if you're concerned about what's in your tap water, just cut out the middleman and buy a home water filter.

• Each year, according to the Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick, making the plastic water bottles used in the U.S. takes enough oil and energy to fuel a million cars. And that doesn't even include the fuel required to ship, fly or truck water across continents and state lines.

• Three-fourths of the half-a-billion plastic water bottles sold in the U.S. every week go to the landfill or to incinerators. It costs our cities more than $70 million to landfill water bottles alone each year, according to Corporate Accountability International.

But there's good news: People are getting the message. Last year, for the first time this decade, bottled water sales fell--not that much, but they went down. Restaurants are proudly serving tap water, adding carbonization on site for customers who want something fizzy. Consumers who want economy, portability and convenience are switching to refillable metal bottles.

Still, we've got a ways to go until everyone realizes that bottled water makes as much sense as a $10,000 sandwich.

So, if you haven't already, you can get started by making a personal commitment to drink from the tap.

Then join a campaign for investment in clean tap water for everyone, like those sponsored by Food & Water Watch, Environmental Working Group or Canada's Polaris Institute. Work to ban the purchase of bottled water by your school, company or city--Corporate Accountability is helping states kick the bottled water habit--and lobby local officials to bring back drinking fountains.

Together, we can send Coke, Pepsi and the rest of the industry a message as clear as a glass of crystal-clean tap water: We're not buying into your manufactured demand anymore. We'll choose our own demands, thank you very much, and we're demanding clean safe water for all!
Annie Leonard is the author of The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession With Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, Our Health - and a Vision for Change. Her latest film, The Story of Bottled Water, was produced by Free Range Studios and can be found at www.storyofbottledwater.org

Save That Drop

The glaciers that feed the Ganges River will most likely melt away by 2030. After that water is going to be more precious than gold, and more endangered than our tiger population.

Please don’t waste what little water we have left while we wait for the Himalayan glaciers which feed our river systems to disappear rapidly!

Take an audit of your home’s water consumption by reading your water bills. Calculate what 5% less consumption would mean (not just in terms of drops, but Rupees too!) and make this your target for the next month.

Below are some tips to get you started:
• Fix every leak as soon as you discover it. Leaky faucets can add up to unnecessarily wasting liters of water everyday. Some of the leaks are hard to spot, so check your toilet bowls as well.
• Flush only when absolutely necessary. If you can, implement a dual flush system which allows you to have different levels depending on how much waste needs to be flushed away. Or you can manually use a cup/small bucket to keep a check of how much water goes down the drain.
• Wash dishes in a bucket of soapy water instead of letting the tap running.
• Stick to our roots. Take bucket baths instead of showers. You will be amazed how many buckets of water go into a single shower, just to achieve the same goal!
• Search for a water filtration system that does not require you to loose too much water in the process. They are available and may be a bit pricier, but in the end you will gain from reduced water bills.
• There is no need to keep the water running while brushing your teeth. Just wet your brush and fill a glass for mouth rinsing.
--- Source: The Climate Project

Reduce Meat

Reducing our meat intake even by one meal a day, or one day a week, we could make an enormous difference to global emissions. Going vegetarian is good for the environment and even better for your heart! Research shows a highly significant correlation between the consumption of even small amounts of animal-based foods and the increasing prevalence of heart disease.

A major study published in February 2005 reconfirmed the link between meat consumption and heart problems. The study, which was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, concluded that among the 29,000 participants, those who ate the most meat were also at the greatest risk for heart disease. The researchers also reported that a high intake of protein from vegetable sources like tofu, nuts, and beans lowers our risk of heart disease by 30 percent.

18% of the global greenhouse-gas emissions are emitted by the animal industry. That is more than all the cars in the world together, and a large part of that 18% is nitrous oxide and methane emissions. Both these gases have a far more powerful greenhouse gas effect than carbon dioxide. Burping cows and sheep emit methane while all livestock cause nitrous oxide gases, so cutting down on the meat you eat, is like taking a small step towards mitigating global warming.

In the early 1990s 46 percent of Indians were non-vegetarians. Today, after slightly over a decade, 64 percent of Indians are non-vegetarians. With the per capita income rising, a much larger chunk of the urban population is eating outside home and the preference is for non-vegetarian food. As per the survey, National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, in North India 40 percent of the population are non-vegetarians whereas 90 percent of South Indians are non-vegetarians. As the risk of heart diseases continues to rise in India, and as climate change continues to takes its toll, maybe the time has come for Indians to go back to the veggies. --- Source: The Climate Project

Why buy local and organic?

When you go out shopping for food, pick vegetables that are not transported by plane; the same goes for fruit. The most important advice is to eat the food you bring home; don’t throw it away, because that’s a waste of resources. Choosing real food—fresh, whole food—is a way to choose nourishment that’s not only good for your body but good for the planet, too.

World trade in food is a major source of greenhouse gases, contributing to global warming. Fossil fuels are used to ship foods long distances. Food trade is growing rapidly. Governments promote trade. Who benefits? Big corporations and big oil.

Walk into any supermarket and you’ll see shelves lined with products bursting with trans fats, high-fructose corn syrup, and additives whose multi-syllabic names can make you go cross-eyed. Each of these ingredients takes tremendous amounts of energy to create and even more energy to import! Kids who are fed a diet of non-chemical foods have fewer traces of chemical residues in their bodies.

Organic foods may also have higher levels of essential nutrients and antioxidants. New research is documenting that organic farms can emit as much as half the carbon dioxide as chemical farms. Organic farms also use much less fossil fuel energy than their conventional counterparts, in many cases as much as one-third less. And organic agriculture can provide a critical carbon sink, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. In fact, 10,000 medium-sized organic farms can store as much carbon in the soil as we would save if we took one million cars off the road. Just one more reason to go organic!

Remember your grandmother’s mealtime lecture to finish the food on your plate because there were starving kids in Africa? That admonition takes on a whole new meaning in our global warming era. So, let’s try to eat only what we need, waste less, and compost our food scraps. --- Source: The Climate Project

In Defence of Small Cars

We have a plethora of small, fuel-efficient cars to choose from in our country. Although public transport is ideal, if you must use a car, we offer some great reasons to choose a green option. You can easily weave through traffic jams and fit into those small space in between the cows and aggressive taxi guy at the intersection. They require significantly less fuel, which will help you keep your finances in check as rising oil prices bring our markets crashing down. They are usually less expensive than bigger cars. If you are fixed on having a luxury model car, than you would be happy to know that Honda’s hybrid option is now in India!

Scared about what will happen to traffic hour once the Tata hits the NANO? Why not take a different approach. Before all the Bajaj bikers scale up to the Nano, why don’t the car owners scale down? This tiny car is fuel-efficient and will be ideal for urban commuting. Feeling extra adventurous? Try the REVA car, which runs on electricity. You can charge it almost every urban petrol station. Plug it in overnight while you sleep, drive in the day, zipping past the Innovas stuck jammed in the heat!

Buying a compact car over an SUV will save you approximately Rs. 30,000/- a year and that’s not including the initial high cost of the SUV! --- Source: The Climate Project