UTS:Newsroom

Investigation taps the inorganic truth on bottled water

23 Jun 2011

Picture by Peta Doherty

In summary:

• In a project involving students from UTS, City University London and Hong Kong Baptist University, the Global Environmental Journalism Initiative has explored the environmental impact of bottled water from several perspectives
• Results of the "Pure Plastiky" investigation have been published by both the Sydney Morning Herald and Crikey.com

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When journalism educators and students were looking for an everyday product to investigate from an environmental journalism point of view, bottled water immediately came to mind.

"From cafes to supermarkets to boardroom tables, bottled water confronts us everywhere – but how much do customers really know about the industry?" said UTS Professor Wendy Bacon, the Australian Director of the Global Environmental Journalism Initiative (GEJI) and the Director of a new website Pure Plastiky.

GEJI is a partnership of ten tertiary institutions around the world developing a focus on environmental journalism through student exchange and curriculum development. It is part of the European Union (EU)/Australia Cooperation in Higher Education and Training scheme which is jointly funded by the Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and the European Commission.

The GEJI bottled water project Pure Plastiky aims to encourage debate about the environmental impacts of bottled water by researching and tracking Australian brands back to their water sources and the petroleum products used in packaging.

Elise Dalley. Picture by Alexandra Berriman

Project reporter and UTS Journalism Law graduate Elise Dalley said, "We looked at digging deeper into an everyday environmental issue that people often don't think twice about. Bottled water connects with issues of waste, chemicals, water and greenhouse gas emissions.

"We thought initially that it would be quite easy to find out about bottled water, but once we started looking behind the labels at the source of the plastic and the water, it got much trickier."

Several Pure Plasticky stories were first published by the Sydney Morning Herald and Crikey.com. One investigation by Dalley published by the Herald was about how companies are able to avoid laws prohibiting deceptive and misleading conduct by registering a trademark.

"Water is being sold in Sydney as 'organic' despite there being no difference between the bottled water and purified tap water. I believe people would think twice about buying water if they knew it was from a tap," Dalley said. Other reports published in Crikey.com were about the routine use of bottled water by some hospitals in NSW and contamination of bottled water.

The Global Environmental Journalism Initiative explored bottled water from a number of perspectives – marketing, recycling, local government policy and the manufacture of plastic bottles. The range of media included sound slide shows, video stories and surveys.

"Despite its claims about caring about sustainability, the industry was often closed when it came to providing information about production and manufacturing of their water bottles," Dalley said.

"It's a multi-million dollar industry which creates carbon emissions and generates a huge amount of waste. Every time someone buys a bottle of water, they need to weigh up the convenience against the environmental damage the bottle will cause."

Pure Plastiky received extra funding from a UTS teaching and learning grant and involved students from City University London, Hong Kong Baptist University and UTS in conducting surveys about attitude to use and disposal of plastic bottles. The results of 2011 surveys will soon be published.

From an article in 77Square:

By ROB THOMAS | The Capital Times | rthomas@madison.com | Posted: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 4:45 am

Top of the Queue: ‘Tapped’ an anything but dry look at bottled water

By ROB THOMAS | The Capital Times | rthomas@madison.com | Posted: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 4:45 am | No Comments Posted

Customers buy bottled water from Costco in this 2007 photo. The new documentary “Tapped” looks at the environmental impact of the bottled-water industry. 

If you watch enough documentaries about the imminent catastrophes facing humanity, the upside is that one calamity ends up solving another. I watched “Countdown to Zero,” about the world’s nuclear threat, (see review on page 13) right before watching “Tapped,” about the world’s precarious clean water supply.
And, on the bright side, if nuclear annihilation does come, we won’t have to fret too much about two-thirds of the planet not having access to clean drinking water by 2030, right?
All kidding aside (and, really, you have to have some sense of humor after wading through these, “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Food Inc.” and others), “Tapped” caught me a little off guard. You might think that a documentary on the water supply might be a little (ahem) dry, but it’s an engaging and enraging look at the environmental impact of the bottled water industry. “Tapped” comes out on DVD this week.
Although I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised, as “Tapped” was made by the producers of the excellent documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” In that film, like many of the new wave of environmental documentaries, filmmakers are looking for emotional narratives through which they can tell their stories and present their cases.
In “Tapped,” it’s often the classic David vs. Goliath struggle of ordinary folk against the big bottling companies. While most water bottles feature mountain springs and peaks on their labels, two out of every five bottles come from a municipal tap. The movie estimates bottling companies like Pepsico pay between six and 11 cents per gallon for water, yet a gallon of that water costs more to a consumer than a gallon of gasoline.
While the health and environmental risks of bottled water are well covered in the film (only one in five of the bottles, which are often carried by folks on the go, end up recycled) I was especially interested to see the marketing triumph of bottled water; how we were convinced to buy something that we get for free from the bathroom faucet.
Director Stephanie Soechtig does give representatives for the bottled-water industry time to air their dissenting views on her film’s thesis, and I have to admit, I do love when she puts them on the spot, turning their own talking points against them. When one claims they don’t really consider tap water the enemy, she leaves him almost dumbstruck when she pulls out a quote from a Pepsico executive who said, in 2000, “The biggest enemy is tap water.” Whoops.
“Tapped” clocks in at a breezy 78 minutes and has a lively tone that includes MGMT and Radiohead (“Fake Plastic Trees,” of course) on the soundtrack. The message about bottled water seems to be getting through; at Lollapalooza last weekend, water was only sold in recyclable cardboard containers. They were easily broken down and tossed in a recycling bin — right next to the piles of soft drink bottles sold at the festival.
For a slightly different take on water rights issues, check out the documentary “Flow” (which played at Sundance Cinemas). “Flow” looks at the growing movement to privatize the world’s water supply. An absolute must-see documentary about the creatures who live in water is the Oscar-winning “The Cove,” a suspenseful and sobering film about a group of activists who try to expose a dolphin-slaughtering operation in Japan.