Raleigh News & Observer - Dissention, drop by drop

Bottled water earns wrath of environmentalists. But the issues aren't cut and dried.
By Andrea Weigl - Staff Writer

The Green revolution is gunning for bottled water.

Among the carbon-footprint conscious, mineral water from the French Alps and artesian-spring water from the Fiji Islands is now declasse. The eat-local set wants us to drink local, too, primarily tap water in reusable Nalgene bottles. In response, the bottled water industry argues that its product is being unfairly singled out as wasteful, even though other bottled beverages incur carbon-footprint costs as well.

Haven't heard this debate in the Triangle yet? It's coming our way, slowly.

While our recent prolonged dry spell prompted an outcry against Pepsi Bottling Ventures of Garner, which processes water from Raleigh's municipal system and sells it as Aquafina, the national trend against bottled water hasn't gained powerful traction here. "Last summer, there was a movement to only do bottled water because of the drought," says Charlie Deal, chef-owner of Jujube restaurant in Chapel Hill. "Maybe we're not ready to do the exact opposite of what we were being told last year."

However, at least one Triangle restaurant has installed a water filtration system and limited its bottled water offering to the sparkling kind. A national anti-bottled water campaign has recruited an organizer at UNC-Chapel Hill. And to mark Earth Day on Tuesday, dining facilities at Duke University and Cisco Systems will begin selling only North American bottled water.

Elsewhere across the nation, the move against bottled water is gaining steam. Slow food matriarch Alice Waters no longer offers bottled water at her trendsetting restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif. Celebrity chef Mario Batali followed suit at his restaurant Del Posto, one of the first restaurants to do so in New York City. Other upscale restaurants from Boston to Chicago have done the same.

Restaurants aren't the only ones jumping on the bottled water ban-wagon. Environmentally conscious mayors have stopped ordering bottled water for their employees in city halls from San Francisco to St. Louis. Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson called bottled water "the greatest marketing scam of all time." Since January, Chicagoans have been paying a 5-cent tax on each container of bottled water, thanks to the mayor and city council.

At what price plastic

Americans drink more bottled water than any other beverage, about 8.8 million gallons per year, or more than 29 gallons each, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp. That consumption almost doubled from 2000 to 2007.

Environmental groups worry about the effect of that consumption: 10 billion discarded plastic bottles in landfills annually, according to the Sierra Club; and 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide and the equivalent of 17 million barrels of petroleum to produce the plastic bottles annually, according a 2006 estimate by environmental think tank The Pacific Institute.

Beyond the environmental effects, bottled water companies have come under fire recently for revelations that 25 percent of bottled water comes from municipal water systems. Pepsi Co.'s Aquafina and Coca-Cola's Dasani are two examples of bottled tap water. Bottlers process the municipal water to further remove trace contaminants, mostly byproducts of the disinfection process. From a tap, water costs consumers 2 cents a gallon, but bottled water can cost between $1 and $8.42 a gallon, according to The Sierra Club.

"Bottled water is bad for taxpayers, bad for public water systems and bad for the environment," says Deborah Lapidus, a national organizer with the "Think Outside the Bottle" campaign being run by Corporate Accountability International. The advocacy group has been recruiting city officials, business leaders and students to its cause.

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