[getsmart-l] How did bottled water become the latest environmental sin?

[Janet May]

Green Report: It's so not cool

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070514_105163_105163

Chi-chi restaurants are now banning bottled water. How did the ubiquitous
accessory become the latest environmental sin?

ANNE KINGSTON | May 14, 2007 | 

When Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., in 1971, it was
at the vanguard of a "think globally, eat locally" gastronomic uprising.
Now, in banning bottled water, the restaurant is at the forefront of another
insurgency. Finally cluing in to the fact that importing bottled water from
Italy is a flagrant violation of its mantra, Chez Panisse stopped serving
Fiuggi still water last summer. It now serves free, filtered tap water. When
it gets a carbonator up and running in the next week that will add fizz to
tap water, the restaurant will stop selling sparkling Acqua Minerale San
Benedetto. 

The culinary mecca joins a growing number of restaurants willing to forgo
300 per cent-plus markups on bottled water in return for increased customer
loyalty. Mike Kossa-Rienzi, Chez Panisse's general manager, says the
ecological damage associated with bottling water spurred them to action.
"It's something we wanted to do for a while," he says. "Finally I thought,
'This is silly: we have this great water that comes out of our tap.' This is
something we really think we need to do. We feel it is the right thing to
do."

Increasingly, it's the fashionable thing to do. For years, David Suzuki and
his brethren have railed against the environmental evils of bottled water --
the pollution generated and energy expended in its production and shipping,
the recyclable plastic bottles that rarely get recycled. More recently,
church groups, including the United Church of Canada, have advocated members
boycott the product on the moral grounds that water is a basic human right,
not a commodity to be sold for profit. The edict was met by the wider public
with much eye-rolling. After all, bottled water is entrenched as an icon of
vitality, health, mobility and safety. No amount of righteous talk was about
to wean people away.

Recently, however, the return-to-the-tap crusade has acquired momentum from
the gourmands who once extolled bottled water's "volcanic temperament" and
"mouth feel." Even the French, who introduced portable Vittel water in
plastic bottles in 1968, are saying "non" to Evian, with bottled water sales
in decline since 2003.

The notion that a bottled-water backlash could gain velocity might seem
absurd given worldwide consumption of 167.8 billion litres in 2005.
Canadians spent $652.7 million on bottled water that year, consuming 1.9
billion litres, 60 litres per capita, with sales up 20 per cent last year.
Bottled water became a status signifier -- Cameron Diaz favoured Penta,
Madonna preferred Voss Artesian Water. Still, we've seen a prop made
glamorous by movie stars losing cachet and acquiring stigma before -- the
cigarette, for one, the Hummer for another. If early indications of backlash
are any sign, what was once a fashion accessory is becoming a fashion crime.

The obvious driving force is green's new vogue. Now that we're shopping to
save The Planet, toting a natural resource that costs more than gasoline in
a plastic bottle destined to clog a landfill for a thousand years doesn't
exactly telegraph eco-cred. Once-stylish water bars with "water sommeliers,"
like the one at Epic in Toronto's Royal York Hotel offering 25 international
brands, suddenly seem passi, out of touch. Earlier this year, Times of
London food critic Giles Coren announced his new zero-tolerance toward
bottled water on his blog. Drinking it, he wrote, signals a gauche lack of
global awareness: "The vanity of it! While half the world dies of thirst or
puts up with water you wouldn't piss in, or already have, we have invested
years and years, and vast amounts of money, into an ingenuous system which
cleanses water of all of the nasties that most other humans and animals have
always had to put up with, and delivers it, dirt cheap, to our homes and
workplaces in pipes, which we can access with a tap."

A tap-water snobbery is emerging. Even restaurateurs unwilling to forfeit
bottled-water revenue boast of drinking from the tap at home. "On the
domestic front I refuse to buy it," says Toronto chef Mark McEwan, who
operates the popular North 44 and Bymark. "The waste factor with these
plastic bottles just makes me crazy." Jamie Kennedy, who runs several
Toronto hot spots including Jamie Kennedy Restaurant, says he sources
locally bottled water in glass bottles. "Why are we bringing in water from
Fiji in a nation that's got more water than any other nation in the world?"
he asks. "It's air freight, it's contributing carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere, it's all those things that if you're environmentally conscious
in the year 2007 you totally question." He sells Gaia water bottled in
Caledon, Ont. The company delivers and picks up the bottles for recycling,
he says. "We're not creating any bottle waste, which is fantastic. And it's
delicious." Yet Kennedy drinks unfiltered tap water. "I'm cool with it," he
says. "It's pretty darn good."

Indeed, born-again tap-water aficionados argue it tastes better than many
bottled offerings. Kossa-Rienzi says Chez Panisse explored serving locally
produced bottled waters but found none more palatable than tap. Last year,
officials in Cleveland took offence when Fiji Water crowed in ads that its
product was free of pollutants and "purified by island trade winds" with the
punchline: "The label says Fiji because it's not bottled in Cleveland." A
local TV show conducted blind taste tests to find the subjects preferred
local tap water. Even self-proclaimed "water connoisseurs" are extolling the
virtues of tap water. The noted Boston-based food writer Corby Kummer, known
for his appreciation of aquatic nuances (he has proclaimed a preference for
"water from the volcanic region between Rome and Naples"), says "it's time
to rediscover municipal water." Unless he wants sparkling water, Kummer
always asks for tap in restaurants. "I've long made it a point of pride as a
sort of a counter-snobbish order," he says. "Now I'm noticing other people
coming to the same conclusion."

Tap-water filtration regimes are a new bragging point. Poggio in Sausalito,
Calif., triple-filters its tap water with a system that cost US$12,000.
Five-month-old Susanna Foo Gourmet Kitchen in Radnor, Pa., spent US$50,000
on its high-tech filtration device. Then there are the purists. At organic
Restaurant Nora in Washington, they use salt, then carbon, then paper to
excise impurities. In an arresting development signalling tap water's new
value, the Beverly Hills restaurant Entoteca has started charging US$8 for a
litre of flat or sparkling water that flows straight from the filtered
spigot. Kummer hints at the next direction tap-water snootiness will take
with talk of his goal to "build a memory bank of municipal water tastes from
around the country and around the world." He admits the taste of tap water
isn't always pleasing. "Sometimes, because of the way it's treated, it will
taste either neutral, slightly chlorinated, and chemically or flat and
bitter." But he finds it superior to bottled water sourced from municipal
supplies. "That's not just filtered tap water," he says, "it's filtered tap
water that they add proprietary minerals to. It tastes completely
artificial."

Filtered tap water accounts for more than one-quarter of bottled water
consumed by Canadians, according to the Bottled Water Assocation of Canada,
an industry trade group. Coca-Cola uses municipal water from Calgary and
Brampton, Ont., for its Dasani brand. The company filters the water five
times to remove chemicals, odours and bacteria, and adds minerals for water
billed "pure as water can get." Pepsi trucks in municipal water from
Vancouver or Mississauga, Ont., for its Aquafina, which is marketed as "the
purest of waters." Such claims justify massive markups. A litre (33.8
ounces) of tap water in Canada costs taxpayers an average of less than
one-tenth of a cent, according to Toronto's city government. The markup on a
litre of bottled water selling for $2.50, then, is 3,000 times. Small wonder
Donald Trump entered the market with his "no-sodium" Trump Ice. As has
Sylvester Stallone, as an investor in a bottler that produces Sly Pure
Glacier Water purportedly from a 10,000-year-old carbon glacier at Mount
Rainier, Wash. The industry, always ripe for
Evian-is-naive-spelled-backwards satire, provides continual fodder with K9,
the "first flavoured, vitamin fortified water for dogs," and the 2006 launch
of US$38 Bling H2O, bottled in Tennessee and marketed as the "Cristal of
bottled water" in "limited edition, corked, 750 ml recyclable frosted glass
bottles, exquisitely handcrafted with Swarovski crystals." Equally
preposterous are water's vaunted magical properties: Propel Fitness Water
promises to pump up energy, eVamor to "restore equilibrium," and Jana Skinny
Water to help shed excess pounds.

Rejection of the industry's grandiose promises -- and high prices -- has
fuelled the return to the tap in France, the world's second largest consumer
of bottled water after Italy. That has been attributed to the efficacy of
advertising campaigns launched by municipal water companies that extol the
benefits, lower cost and environmental virtues of tap water. (In Paris, tap
water costs less than a third of a European cent per litre. Groupe Neptune's
Cristaline, a popular brand, sells for 15 European cents a litre, while
Danone's Evian costs about 60 European cents a litre.) Earlier this year,
Groupe Neptune fought back with billboards featuring a photograph of a white
toilet marked with a big red "X." "I don't drink the water I use to flush,"
the posters read. "I drink Cristaline."

Such gross-out imagery -- abetted by reports of ecological contamination and
corrupt filtration like that in Walkerton, Ont., that caused 2,300 to fall
ill and seven to die in 2000 -- transformed bottle water from a luxury only
the rich could afford to a perceived necessity the mass market couldn't
afford not to buy. As a result, bottled water's chic is diminishing. No
longer does it offer the comfort of belonging to a private club drinking
from an exclusive water supply. Indeed, Edmonton-based Earth Water, a
national bottler of spring and osmosis water, forges an explicit connection
between bottled-water consumption in affluent nations and the fragility of
water supply in developing nations: it donates net profits to the United
Nations Refugee Agency, which runs water-aid programs.

The alleged health and beauty benefits that made bottled water the preferred
constant-hydration libation of celebrities (who can forget that widely
circulated photo of Princess Di exiting the gym with her Evian?) are under
new scrutiny. The industry remains steadfast in its claims that bottled
water is cleaner and more rigorously tested than tap water. Elizabeth
Griswald, a spokesperson for the Canadian Bottled Water Association, says
bottled water is subject to three tiers of regulation -- Ottawa monitors it
under the Food and Drug Act; the provinces approve the sourcing of water;
the industry also regulates itself. Tap water, she points out, is regulated
only as a utility by the provinces with no consistent national standards.
Unlike tap water that can flow through antiquated pipes, bottled water is
produced in clean facilities and packaged in sterile bottles, she says.
Still, the manufacturing process itself can contaminate. In 2004, Coca-Cola
Co. recalled its entire Dasani line of bottled water from the British market
after levels of bromate, a potentially harmful chemical, were found to
exceed legal standards. In March, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency warned
the public not to consume imported Jermuk Classic brand Natural Sparkling
Mineral Water because it contained excessive levels of arsenic.

Rick Smith, executive director of Toronto-based Environmental Defence, an
agency that tracks the exposure of Canadians to pollutants, doesn't buy
industry claims. "There's a misconception that bottled water is safer, which
is complete nonsense," he says. "Toronto's tap water has to meet standards
for 160 contaminants; bottled water has standards for less than a
half-dozen. And 650 bacterial tests are done monthly of Toronto water. The
extent to which bottled water is tested for bacteria is barely known."

Smith foresees a looming crisis. "Bottled water is a not only a complete
disaster for the environment but potentially for human health," he says. His
greatest criticism lies with the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle,
the industry's real product. "The production of one kilogram of PET requires
17.5 kilograms of water and results in air pollution emissions of over half
a dozen significant pollutants," Smith says. "In other words, the water
required to create one plastic water bottle is significantly more than that
bottle will contain." Then there is the waste factor.An estimated 88 per
cent of water bottles are not recycled. According to the Environment and
Plastics Industry Council, Canadians sent 65,000 tonnes of PET beverage
containers, many of them water bottles, to landfill or incineration in 2002.

The volatility of PET bottles, which should never be refilled due to risks
of leaching and bacterial growth, remains uncertain. Last year, William
Shotyk, a Canadian scientist working at the University of Heidelberg,
released a study of 132 brands of bottled water in PET bottles stored for
six months, and found that significant levels of antimony, a toxic chemical
used in the bottle's production, had leached into the water. Shotyk, who has
vowed never to drink bottled water again, is now studying the bottles over a
longer term, given the lag times that can occur between bottling, shipping,
purchase and consumption. The Canadian Bottled Water Association counters
that the levels don't pose a risk to humans. "Technically bottled water will
not go bad if you properly store it," Griswald says, though she admits algae
will build up if it's left in sunlight in high heat.

Smith predicts concern about internal pollution will increase as more people
are tested for chemical contamination. "There's mounting evidence that these
containers are leaching toxins into the beverages we're drinking and our
children are drinking and there are easy substitutes available," he says.
The Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. commenced a massive study in
2000. This year, Statistics Canada begins testing 5,000 Canadians for a wide
range of contaminants. Early data from the U.S. is troubling, Smith says.
"There's empirical evidence that these plastic ingredients are now in the
bodies of every citizen," he says. "I am quite sure that a few years from
now we will look back at these toxins and shake our heads and wonder, 'What
the heck were we thinking?' "

Litigation against plastic manufacturers will rival that against cigarette
companies, Smith predicts. On March 12, a billion-dollar class action suit
was filed in Los Angeles against five leading manufacturers of baby bottles
containing Bisphenol-A, a toxin found in hard plastic and linked to
early-onset puberty, declining sperm counts and the huge increase in breast
and prostate cancer. It is the first such suit to be brought against the
industry. "What we are witnessing is the beginning of a tobacco-style
fight," says Smith.

Already signs point to water awareness becoming the next trendy topic. The
recently published Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of our Water by Alan
Snitow, Deborah Kaufman and Michael Fox, chronicles the upsurge of
international grassroots protest against groundwater depletion and the
privatization of water by multinational bottlers. The community of Wisconsin
Dells, Wis., for instance, waged a successful battle against Swiss-based
Nestli after the conglomerate announced plans to set up a Perrier bottling
plant in the area.

Thirst's authors see a bottled-water backlash as crucial to preserving a
public water supply. The campaign to wean North America from the bottle to
the tap has been "a driving force in shifting cultural attitudes," they
write, noting widespread bottled-water consumption reinforces the perception
that water is a grab-and-go consumer product and that the water supply is
not safe or well managed: "Local critics are beginning to see the industry
as a harbinger of wider threats, including the commodification of water, the
export of water in bulk, and the end of the keystone idea of affordable
water as a public trust and human right." Paying grossly inflated prices for
the natural resource, they contend, paves the way: "If we as individuals get
used to paying whatever price the market will bear for bottled water as a
product, will we slowly give up the collective commitment to clean,
affordable water as a public service that must be guaranteed by government?"

Already, though, there are signs government wants in on the trend. San
Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has just announced plans to copy Chez Panisse
and provide carbonated filtered tap water at City Hall. Chez Panisse's
patrons are now asking where they can buy their own carbonators, says
Kossa-Rienzi. "It's definitely sparked a new consciousness."

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