Bottled Water Backlash
25 June 2008
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Jennifer Phillips always felt guilty that her large Nashville law firm didn’t recycle. So after big client meetings, she collected all the empty plastic water bottles, took them home and added them to her own curbside recycling bin. Now, she is proud to report that her firm, Bass, Berry & Sims, serves an icy pitcher of tap water during meetings. “We even have glasses with the company logo on them,” she says. Phillips estimates switching to tap keeps 3,000 plastic water bottles per week out of the landfill. It’s a trend that is taking hold in the U.S., Europe and Canada: more people are switching from bottled water to tap. Call it reverse snob appeal. Bottled water once carried a certain European mystique. But these days, it’s the tap water enthusiasts, concerned about the environment, who get to act self-righteous. Just like it has become cool to bring your own cloth bags to the grocery store and your own mug to the coffee shop, the reusable water bottle is the hip, new eco accessory.
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In Canada, the bottled water issue has become, as Wilk says, an “uprising.” College students are staging protests—declaring “bottled water-free zones” on campus. High school activists are raising questions about why their school board members are locking them into a contract with Coke or Pepsi (makers of Aquafina and Dasani bottled water) when they have access to drinking fountains for free. Some students have jokingly started to sell bottled air for $1.
In an even bolder move, the United Church of Canada asked its three million members to consider banning bottled water during meetings and events. “We just had a lot of concerns about governance and accountability,” says Julie Graham, who leads the anti-bottled water campaign for a Toronto ecumenical activist group called Kairos. “Why is it people in Canada are willing to pay twice as much for bottled water as for gasoline? We started challenging that and raising questions about billions of empty bottles going into landfills.”
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Another big push for the bottled water backlash came during World Water Day 2007, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom declared a ban on bottled water contracts for all city departments. Instead of bottled water vending machines, he installed large dispensers in city buildings that poured out pure tap water from the Sierra mountains. Other cities, from Chicago to Salt Lake, followed suit.
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It takes 15 million barrels of oil per year to make all of the plastic water bottles in America, according to the Container Recycling Institute. Sending those bottles by air and truck uses even more fossil fuel.
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It takes 1,000 years for plastic bottles to break down, CRI estimates. But when they do, they disintegrate into tiny bits. The green and blue bottles, especially, look like tasty food to fish and shorebirds. Scientists are finding these dead animals on the beach, with bellies full of plastic pellets.
If more states added deposits on bottled water bottles, it might spur recycling. Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) has even proposed a national beverage bottle bill. But PET water bottles (short for polyethylene terephthalate) can only be recycled a few times. What about going back to refillable glass bottles? For one thing, they are heavy to ship. And Zero Waste expert Neil Seldman of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance doesn’t imagine anyone could persuade the beverage industry to go that route. “They have always lobbied against it,” Seldman says. “The industry does not want to deal with it after people buy their product—they want to wash their hands of the containers.” That’s why it makes the most sense to avoid creating the waste in the first place by drinking tap from your own container, Seldman says.
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The IBWA argues that bottled water companies are responding to environmental concerns by making lighter bottles that require less plastic in the manufacturing process. Kay says the industry does invest significant money to improve access to recycling at large public venues, such as airports and concert halls. Companies like Nalgene, Sigg and Brita are aggressively marketing their refillable bottles and home filters as a more responsible option.
When it comes to reusable bottles, however, consumers still need to do their homework. Research shows that clear bottles made of polycarbonate plastic (such as the original 32-ounce Nalgene) can leach bisphenol-A (BPA). This is an endocrine-disrupting chemical that acts like estrogen in the body. BPA essentially tricks your body into thinking it’s estrogen, says Washington State University Researcher Patricia Hunt. She discovered the dangers of BPA when some of her polycarbonate mouse cages started to leach BPA, causing infertility in female mice.
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Now that more people are trying get out of the bottled water habit, groups like Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and EWG wonder if this new awareness will translate into more support for public water supplies, and for water conservation in general.
Once you kick the bottle, they say, the next step is to get educated and get involved—find out what your water system needs and start pushing your elected officials to bring more funds to bear on the problem. According to NRDC, the EPA has asked for billions of dollars for a public water supply needs assessment. But the Bush Administration has allocated only a small portion of that request, says NRDC attorney Mae Wu.
“People are very concerned about what’s in their water because we drink so much of it,” says Jane Houlihan, EWG’s vice president for research. “We’re advocating for more protection for the waters that are the source of what comes out of kitchen faucets.”
MELISSA KNOPPER is a Colorado-based science writer and tap water enthusiast.
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