Sky Magazine - Has our love affair with bottled water gone tepid?

Once upon a time, 30 years ago, people in America drank water from the tap. Fountains were prevalent on downtown streets, in school hallways and parks, and sipping from them wasn't
considered the equivalent of licking a dog.
 

Then along came those little green bottles of Perrier from France in 1976. Having spent decades watching heavy-lidded European actors sip water from bottles in films, we in the United States were ready for the more romantic version of the boring stuff that dribbled artlessly from our home faucets. Scarce indeed became the poseur without a jug of the champagne of mineral water in one hand.
A decade later, American sales of Perrier, first bottled in 1863 at the behest of
Napoleon III, reached 300 million bottles.
 

Meanwhile, Evian had appeared on market shelves, earning its stripes in 1981 after news reports that Woody Allen had declined to fall into a lake for a scene in A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedyand instead had himself doused in Evian for a follow-up shot. The rich and famous weren't the only ones who lunged for bottled water. Pepsi and Coke soon introduced their own contenders, Aquafina and Dasani, for the regular Jane crowd, who may have heard too many stories about sewage leaks into their municipal water supplies. Sales of bottled water soared
throughout the 1990s and well into the new century, reaching $5.3 billion in 2007, according to market researchers at The Nielsen Company.

 

Companies such as Nestle, which sells Pure Life, among
other brands, reaped enormous profits peddling a product that fiowed freely and for free from our faucets at home.

 

 

A few years ago, the tide began to change. Environmentalists declared Ioudly that it wasn't such a good idea to drink water from plastic bottles, which require petroleum to
manufacture and ship, and which pile up in landfills by the tens of billions each year. Try to imagine every water bottle a quarter filled with oil, they
suggested, in order to get the full picture. On top of this, critics pointed out that tests of bottled versus tap water showed virtually no difference in quality or health effects.
 

Their case found purchase, and the consuming public began to slowly step away from the bottle. Trendy restaurants in New York and Los Angeles announced theyd be serving
from the tap, thank you very much, even going so far as to install pricey in house
filtration systems. Mayors from San Francisco, Seattle and Salt Lake City resolved to stop buying bottled water for city offices, noting that tap is as good as bottled and-in the case of San Francisco-probably better.
 

Suddenly, rejecting bottled water was as stylish as drinking it used to be. Even Garrison Keillor, that uncommon purveyor of all things common, declared himself on the wagon. In a 2007 Salon
article, he wrote: "No more designer water. Water is water. If you want lemon fiavoring, add a slice of lemon. You want bubbles, stick a straw in it and blow." Perhaps the only news worse for the industry came· when the National Coalition of American Nuns took a stand against bottled water on the moral ground that essential God-given resources ought not be privatized.
 

Sales slipped for the first time in the United States in 2008. Nielsen puts the decline at 3.6 percent, while Gary Hemphill of the consulting firm Beverage Marketing Corporation measures a smaller drop, of 1 percent across the category.  The two firms measure sales a bit differently, but even Hemphill's numbers represent a stunning divergence from the upward leaps and bounds enjoyed since the 1970s. FIJI Water laid off about 20 percent of its workforce in December due to slowing sales. And Nestle announced in February that it had cut spending on its water business internationally by 26 percent, or $236 million.

 

Money Troubles
 

The industry blames declining sales on a flagging overall economy and slimmed-down household budgets, which, counterintuitively, is the optimistic view, since it presumes the market eventually will bounce back and bottled won't go the way of potbellied pigs and the waterbed.
Tom Lauria, vice president of communications for the International Bottled Water Association, pooh-poohs talk of a long-term decline. "We don't attribute much to the activists," he says. "We aren't able to measure a discernible consumer retreat from enjoying bottled water. You can count the restaurants that have stopped serving it on one hand." Regarding the municipalities that have quit buying it, he says, "Theyre making the point the activists want them
to make. It's more symbolic. They weren't ever huge volume purchasers."
 

Nope, bottled wateris here to stay, says Lauria. "For immediate hydration, nothing beats bottled water. Tap water doesn't taste or smell quite the
same. To many, there is a refreshing nature to bottled water that comes off as crisp and clean. It's deeply satisfying." He can't resist noting that San Francisco's Mayor Gavin Newsom recently was caught with a mostly empty case of bottled water in the back of his hybrid SUV (a spokesperson said it was for Newsom's security detail and wasn't
purchased with city money). Lauria reports with barely muted glee, "He said it's a bad habit, but he enjoys it from time to time."
 

Mediation
 

The industry has undergone marked changes lately, in response to environmental concerns. Nestle, for example, has introduced the half-liter "Eco-Shape" bottle, which bears a smaller label, claiming it contains 30 percent less plastic than the average bottle and is easier to crush for recycling. FIJI, which declared itself carbon negative in January, has invested in reforestation
and says it aims to manufacture with renewable energy and alter its shipping routes to slash emissions.
 

It looks like bottled water is attempting to right its way out of a skid. "While we can't predict the future, what we do know is that the bottled water industry is seeing a significant backlash," says Deborah Lapidus, national organizer for the campaign Think Outside the Bottle, initiated in 2006 by Boston-based Corporate Accountability International. "As a result of our campaign, tens of thousands of people and dozens of governments and institutions such as schools and hospitals--over 80 organizations--are pledging to offer tap water over bottled water."  As for the industry's greening efforts, Lapidus asks, "Why applaud bottled water campaigns for fixing a problem they contribute to? No matter how much green you throw on the cover, it's expensive for consumers, bad for public water systems and damaging to the environment."
 

There are still the matters of convenience and quality, though, and the bottled water industry argues that its offerings are cleaner, clearer and better tasting. In making his case, Lauria points to elevated levels of lead found in Washington, D.C's tap water several years ago. Lapidus responds by citing the 2004 recall in Britain of half a million bottles of Dasani, which contained unacceptable levels of bromate, which is linked to increased cancer risk. Environmentalists argue that overall, bottled brands are are underregulated.

 

"Tap water is tested for safety more frequently than bottled water," Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Mae Wu told Congress in September, claiming that the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees tap, is tougher than the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees bottled. Bauria disputes this assessment, noting, ''There is plenty of oversight of
bottled Water and all food products."
 

Think Outside the Bottle likes to stage blind taste tests, offering both bottled and tap to passersby in cities across the country. More often than not, people can't tell the difference, which isn't all that surprising when you consider that as much as 40 percent of bottled water is actually filtered tap water: "It makes no sense to spend money on bottled water when you have safe drinking water coming out of the tap," says Lapidus.
 

Thanks to the campaign, Pepsi has agreed to print the words public water source on
its Aquafina bottles, in contrast to the squiggled images of snow-peaked mountains
that grace the labels.
 

 

So, if there is no substantial difference in flavor or quality, why do we continue to reach for the bottle?

 

There is that age-old drive for status, explains Lars Perner, assistant professor
of clinical marketing at the University of Southern California--also, matters of convenience and our chronic reluctance to plan ahead, which would be necessary to make refillable bottles a truly viable option. But perhaps the most significant reason flows from the U.S. obsession
with cleanliness, as evidenced by our affinity for Purell antibacterial soap (slogan: "Imagine a touchable world") and those evening news specials where the reporter waves a black light wand
over the bedding in a motel room.
 

"Internationally, we have a reputation for being very cleanliness-oriented," Perner says, adding that because we are a wealthy nation, we can afford the luxury of germophobia. "The Japanese are the only people who are more concerned in this area."
 

In the end, Lapidus's biggest worry is that our reliance on bottled water will serve to undermine the viability of public water sources, the only practical way to ensure that everyone, regardless
of income, has access to safe water.

 

These systems need maintenance and updates to the tune of $22 billion per year, she says. But if everyone carries a bottle of Dasani in their knapsack, they'll  be less likely to fork over the money.
 

Certainly the $5 billion Americans spent on bottled water last year would have laid a lot of new pipe.
 

In Tom Lauria's view, there is elbow room for both the tap and bottled varieties. He cites emergencies like Hurricane Katrina and the particular needs of joggers.

 

"Here's one for you," he says. "You're on an airplane. You can't just go to the tap. There is a time and place for everything." Plus, he adds, "you can't really shower in bottled water."
 

Unless you're Woody Allen...