Message in a Bottle ~ 3rd installment

 From the start, Nevins pioneered a three-part strategy. First, he connected bottled water to exclusivity: In 1977, just before Perrier's U.S. launch, he flew 60 journalists to France to visit "the source" where Perrier bubbled out of the ground. He connected Perrier to health, sponsoring the New York City Marathon, just as long-distance running was exploding as a fad across America. And he associated Perrier with celebrity, launching with $4 million in TV commercials featuring Orson Welles. It worked. In 1978, its first full year in the United States, Perrier sold $20 million of water. The next year, sales tripled to $60 million.

What made Perrier distinctive was that it was a sparkling water, served in a signature glass bottle. But that's also what left the door open for Evian, which came to the United States in 1984. Evian's U.S. marketing was built around images of toned young men and women in tight clothes sweating at the gym. Madonna drank Evian--often onstage at concerts. "If you were cool, you were drinking bottled water," says Ed Slade, who became Evian's vice president of marketing in 1990. "It was a status symbol."

Evian was also a still water, which Americans prefer; and it was the first to offer a plastic bottle nationwide. The clear bottle allowed us to see the water--how clean and refreshing it looked on the shelf. Americans have never wanted water in cans, which suggest a tinny aftertaste before you take a sip. The plastic bottle, in fact, did for water what the pop-top can had done for soda: It turned water into an anywhere, anytime beverage, at just the moment when we decided we wanted a beverage, everywhere, all the time.

Perrier and Evian launched the bottled-water business just as it would prove irresistible. Convenience and virtue aligned. Two-career families, overprogrammed children, prepared foods in place of home-cooked meals, the constant urging to eat more healthfully and drink less alcohol--all reinforce the value of bottled water. But those trends also reinforce the mythology.

We buy bottled water because we think it's healthy. Which it is, of course: Every 12-year-old who buys a bottle of water from a vending machine instead of a 16-ounce Coke is inarguably making a healthier choice. But bottled water isn't healthier, or safer, than tap water. Indeed, while the United States is the single biggest consumer in the world's $50 billion bottled-water market, it is the only one of the top four--the others are Brazil, China, and Mexico--that has universally reliable tap water. Tap water in this country, with rare exceptions, is impressively safe. It is monitored constantly, and the test results made public. Mineral water has a long association with medicinal benefits--and it can provide minerals that people need--but there are no scientific studies establishing that routinely consuming mineral water improves your health. The FDA, in fact, forbids mineral waters in the United States from making any health claims.

If the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.

And for this healthy convenience, we're paying what amounts to an unbelievable premium. You can buy a half- liter Evian for $1.35--17 ounces of water imported from France for pocket change. That water seems cheap, but only because we aren't paying attention.

In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It's so good the EPA doesn't require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.

Taste, of course, is highly personal. New Yorkers excepted, Americans love to belittle the quality of their tap water. But in blind taste tests, with waters at equal temperatures, presented in identical glasses, ordinary people can rarely distinguish between tap water, springwater, and luxury waters. At the height of Perrier's popularity, Bruce Nevins was asked on a live network radio show one morning to pick Perrier from a lineup of seven carbonated waters served in paper cups. It took him five tries.

We are actually in the midst of a second love affair with bottled water. In the United States, many of the earliest, still-familiar brands of springwater--Poland Spring, Saratoga Springs, Deer Park, Arrowhead--were originally associated w

Why Would You Choose Bottled Water?

from an article at: Green Energy News

Nowadays, most people probably agree that we need to drink plenty of water in order to stay healthy, avoid dehydration and to function efficiently. The exact quantity of water that you need will vary according to your body mass and size, climatic conditions you find yourself in and the level of physical activity in which you are engaged. However, most medical authorities currently suggest that your daily water intake should be between six and eight large glasses of water.
This perfectly sound medical advice has been one factor used in the advertising campaigns of bottled water suppliers to very effectively market their product. The bottled water market is relatively new – but it is very large. Consumer demand for bottled water more than doubled between 1997 and 2005, and over 200 billion bottles of water are sold worldwide per annum.
That’s a massive amount of empty bottles being thrown away. Some – a little less than a quarter of the total according to current statistics – are recycled. The rest end up as landfill. The environmental consequences are significant. If all of those empty bottles were aligned end to end, they would span a distance covered long enough to get to the moon and back – 56 times!
The amount of carbon emissions involved, both in the production of the bottles and the transportation of the finished product, is also worthy of consideration. It’s an amazing fact that the production of the bottles uses three times as much water as the bottles contain when they are shipped.
Bottled water is, simply put, an environmental disaster. Of course, it’s not out of the question that you may be more worried about your own health than that of the planet – which may well be understandable in many cases. The problem with this logic is that there is absolutely no evidence that bottled water is better for your health than common or garden tap water.
Tap water in North America and Europe is perfectly safe to drink and is subject to stringent checks. Some bottled water has been found to contain traces of uranium and estrogen chemicals. Some of the chemicals found in bottled water are as a result of “leeching” from the plastic (PET) bottles. It’s also established that many bottled waters contain, along with other minerals, salt – which is not very good for your blood pressure.
The only reason you might conceivably be tempted to use bottled water would be the taste. However, in blind taste tests most consumers are unable to tell the difference between bottled water and tap water. Of course, if your house is in a hard water area, or if you just don’t like the taste of your tap water (perhaps due to chlorine which is often used by the water supplier to kill bacteria) you may wish to evluate other alternatives.
You could consider using a home filtration system – which will be better for the environment, better for your health and very much cheaper than bottled water. You can install whole house filtration systems, under sink filters. All of these solutions will remove contaminants, enhance taste and reduce water hardness in a manner which is environmentally friendly.

Giving bottled water the Boot

A story about a collaboration by 28 NSW Shires to reduce waste by a public campaign called "Tap Water, Please." There is great momentum for the unbottled movement across all demographics.

Tap water please but bring your own bottle

BY CLARE COLLEY

01 Jul, 2010 11:30 AM

Blayney Shire residents will miss out on the free reusable drink bottles distributed as part of NetWaste’s ‘Tap Water Please’ campaign as the Blayney Shire Council doesn’t have a provision in their budget to purchase them, director of environmental services Paul O’Brien said.The campaign, launched in a TV and radio ad campaign across the Central West on Monday, aims to make people think before they drink and cut back on their consumption and purchase of bottled water.Out of the 28 NetWaste councils that were invited to distribute the bottles only 11 took up the offer, NetWaste’s environmental learning adviser Sue Clarke said. 

“The other councils are putting up posters to show their support because we made the decision to run the campaign right over the NetWaste region,” she said.

“Different councils have to make their own decisions.”As well as costing more than tap water plastic water bottles also have negative environmental impacts with only 35 per cent being recycled.

“The really good thing is the message being promoted to get people to think about some of the consequences of bottled water,” she said. Ms Clarke said so far 4,000 of the reusable, recyclable, Australian-made bottles had been distributed across the region with each council getting about 300 bottles.“We’ve had a huge response,” she said.“I’ve had so many phone calls. It’s been wonderful.” 

Councils in Bathurst, Orange, Cabonne, Cowra, Forbes, Parkes, Dubbo, Wellington, Warren, Lithgow and Narromine are giving the bottles away as part of the campaign.