OT - Put Down That Poland Spring

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 US 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 sixty million plastic water
bottles are thrown away. Most are not recycled. The Pacific Institute
has estimated twenty 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 source of water.

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, comes 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, Massachusetts. 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 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, or 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
is 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, wrote "The Bottled Water Lie," and Gigi Kellett
of Corporate Accountability International. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Gigi Kellett of Corporate Accountability
International and Michael Blanding, wrote "The Bottled Water Lie" for
alternet.org. They're both in the Boston studio. We're talking about
the bottled water lie.

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, you know, 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 bottle -- drinking tap water a few years ago and was drinking
only Poland Spring and knew, you know, that she would be able to tell
Poland Spring of 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 that 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 UK 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, you know, 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 to -- you talk about additional techniques like
reverse-osmosis.

MICHAEL BLANDING: Right, yeah. So there are various techniques that
the companies use, and, you know, they tout them as these proprietary
techniques that, you know, they go through seven different phases of
filtering, and all the rest of it. And, you know, when you look at it,
though -- you know, 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, you know, the kind that
you attach to your tap for a couple of hundred bucks. So, you know,
the -- it's not as sophisticated as they might, you know, 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, you know, here in
the United States there are, you know, several communities that have
actually, you know, had plants take a lot of water from their
groundwater up in Michigan, you know, where they can actually see the
water level of one of their streams declining because of, you know,
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, you know, 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 -- you
know, municipal water is somehow, you know, 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 -- you know, 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, Michigan 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 US 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 -- you know,
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% 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.

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