Spinning the bottle: the war over packaged water

Everyone agrees that we deserve a safe, reliable and affordable supply of drinking water.

After that, it gets complicated.

Is bottled water a healthy complement to tap water, to be carried with us in our on-the-go lives?

Or is packaged water a threat - to our health, our wallets, our environment, to the exising status of water as a public trust, even to basic human rights?

Here in the Sault and across Canada, a battle is being waged for our minds, with both water activists and the beverage industry spinning the bottle.

Last week, Maude Barlow, senior advisor on water to the president of the United Nations and national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, was in town as part of a 19-city speaking tour to convince Canadians to swear off bottled water.

So was Sid Ryan, Ontario president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).

But even before their visit was announced to Sault newsrooms, Canadian representatives of Nestlé, the Swiss-based multinational packaged food company and major purveyor of bottled water, were on the phone, seeking to put a counterspin on Barlow and Ryan's message. Bottling and selling drinking water will lead to privatization of our source water, Barlow told a hundred or so people at the Great Northern Resort and Conference Centre.

"There's no reason to drink it," Barlow said.

Water is essential to human life and no one should be able to control it or expropriate it for profit, she told Saultites.

Nestlé Waters Canada doesn't see it that way.

Nestlé maintains that challenging bottled water will not improve the public system.

At the same time, the packaged-food giant says it isn't interested in engaging in a bottled water-versus-tap-water debate.

"Bottled water cannot replace tap water," says Nestlé in a fact sheet sent to SooToday.com. "We see our competition as other bottled beverages, not tap water."

Barlow, Ryan, the Council of Canadians and CUPE are trying to get people to pledge not to drink bottled water because they say it leads to water shortages, contributes to climate change, undermines public support for necessary infrastructure and is not safer or less expensive than tap water.

Barlow is asking us to personally pledge to work to ensure that water remains a public trust - a human right that no one will ever again be denied because they cannot pay, while someone else is making a killing from it.

Nestlé says it has as much interest as anyone in maintaining municipal water systems.

It uses municipal water for everything but source water.

But Barlow said the devil is in the details.

She said bottled water companies have mined and continue to mine bodies of water until they are gone.

Barlow says that Nestlé is extracting 3.6 million litres of water a day from a source it claimed in Aberfoyle, Ontario, and the area is now experiencing a water shortage.

Nestlé says its permit in Aberfoyle allows for 3.6 million litres per day, but the company is actually taking about 60 percent of the approved volume.

In fact, Nestlé says it is a net importer of water into the Great Lakes Region.

It quotes an Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources study saying that in 2005, for every one litre exported, 14 litres were imported to the region.

"The earth's hydrologic cycle naturally replenishes what Nestlé Waters Canada bottles and uses to bottle its spring waters," says Nestlé.

Barlow says we, including the bottled water companies, are taking much more water than the earth's hydrologic cycle can naturally replenish.

Choosing not to drink bottled water is a simple action that everyone can take to reduce impact on the hydrological cycle.

Barlow also argues that bottled water is not safer than tap water.

"The bottled water industry is not nearly as regulated and tested as you might think, because it's classified as a low-risk food group under the Canadian Food Inspection Agency," she said. "A new report that just came out said that just under six percent of all bottled waters were tested last year under the Canada Food Inspection Agency."

"In other words, it is almost exclusively regulated by the industry itself, which says, 'just trust me.' Well I don't trust them. Not one little bit."

Barlow says that independent tests have found harmful chemicals in the bottles and she cautioned people not to drink from bottles that have been heated because this accelerates the release of chemicals.

Nestlé says its bottles are safe and that they're recycled, mitigating environmental impact.

And, the company says it's taking other measures in its production to further mitigate environmental impact.

For example, reductions in the size of Nestlé packaging have reduced the amount of energy it uses by 30 percent annually over the past 10 years.

The quantities of greenhouse gas emissions the company produces have dropped by 22 percent annually over that time.

Nestlé also says that it has reduced corrugate use by 88,000 tons over the last five years, the equivalent of saving 528,000 trees.

And, the company has changed both the shape of its bottles, saving plastic, and its processing methods, saving on shipping.

Barlow and Ryan want people to think about how much more plastic, CO2 emissions from shipping, cardboard, water and energy would be saved if no bottled water was produced.

"Consumers do not spend money on bottled water at the expense of tap water," counters Nestlé. "The majority of Canadians (70 percent) drink a combination of bottled and tap water. They drink tap water at home and bottled water out-of-home to support their busy, on-the-go lifestyles."

Barlow and Ryan, on behalf of the Council of Canadians and CUPE, say it's time to make some difficult choices and address the myth of abundance.

Companies like Nestlé are putting water in bottles and selling it to consumers for considerable profit, but the natural resource is not being renewed and it's not unlimited.

In fact, they say, there's a global water crisis and Canadians - the second greatest users of water in the world - are depleting their own supplies of water.

And we are about to be inundated with water refugees who can no longer live where many generations of their families grew up, because there is no water.

Nestlé says there are a number of initiatives Canadians can focus on to help preserve, protect and strengthen our water systems that are more effective than targeting bottled water.

These include:

- Calls to the government to make water and sewer infrastructure development and maintenance a priority.

- Making all water users pay their fair share for the real cost of water.

- Making farms and industries more efficient.

- Treating water before it's returned to its source.

- Raising public awareness about water conservation.

Barlow and Ryan say the bottled water companies often try to divert attention away from the negative impacts of their activities and sometimes come up with some good ideas in the process.

But they want you to think about how much more we could accomplish if we also stop drinking bottled water.

This June, the of Federation of Canadian Municipalities will be asked to pass a resolution urging all municipalities to phase out the sale and purchase of bottled water where appropriate.

CUPE local leaders are putting pressure on their own mayors and councillors to support the resolution.