Thanks in part to celebrities promoting bottled water as an alternative to tap water, bottled H20 is now the fastest selling beverage in the USA. According to Johns Hopkins University, Americans spend an estimated $10 billion on bottled water each year. Globally in 2004, more than 154 billion liters of bottled water were consumed.
Worldwide, consumers spent more than $100 billion on bottled H2O. The American-based Earth Policy Institute reports that even though bottled water is often no healthier than tap water, it can cost up to 10,000 times more. Often bottle water costs more per liter than gasoline.
The Future of Water
From Vancouver to New York, Mayors, citizens, environmental groups and restaurant owners are making the decision to give bottled water the boot. Instead, politicians and numerous water organizations advocate using tap water. In fact, San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom refuses to utilize city funds to purchase single servings of bottled water for use at government functions.
More than 1.1 billion individuals around the world don’t have access to clean drinking water.
Today, world water rights are under threat from corporations that want to privatize the right to access free water. Often the same corporations selling bottled water to the masses are quietly buying up water rights in pristine locations around the world. The ability to access clean drinking water is a universal right not a privilege, access to water for every individual on the planet is a moral imperative. Water advocacy organizations report more than 1.1 billion individuals around the world don’t have access to clean drinking water.
The future of water is only going to get more precarious as the negative effects of global warming increase. Additionally, population growth — coupled with industrialization and urbanization — will result in an increasing demand for water and will have serious consequences on the environment, reports The World Water Council.
Environmental Impact
Plastic water bottles have a high environmental cost. Think Outside the Bottle is working to encourage businesses and individuals to support a ban on bottled water. Their campaign estimates that meeting Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 17 million barrels of oil last year – enough fuel to operate more than 1 million US cars for one year – and generates more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, the vast majority of plastic water bottles end up in local landfills, oceans and rivers. Plastic water bottles can take more than 700 years to decompose in the landfill.
Green Pages
Inside the Bottle works to create awareness around the bottled water industry. Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Danone – dominate the bottled water industry: http://www.insidethebottle.org/
Think Outside the Bottle asks individuals and businesses to take the pledge to not use bottled water: http://www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org/
Sierra Club Canada is demanding multi-national companies ‘respect the right of local communities to exercise democratic control over the use of their water': http://www.sierraclub.org/committees/cac/water/
The USA-based Natural Resources Defense Council offers a good overview on the facts and myths behind the bottled water debate: http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qbw.asp
Thirst is a compelling documentary look at international water rights’ and urges us all to take an interest in our water before it is too late: http://www.thirstthemovie.org/
Perhaps what makes Flow: For Love of Water different than the recent spate of other H20-centric films is that filmmaker Irena Salina attempts to show water as a component of the health and well being of not just humans and animals, but also of the earth itself: http://flowthefilm.com/
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