A holiday in asia and a holiday from plastic

from smh.com.au,  by Michael Short

Tom Neal Tacker argues everyone is better off if you take a more eco-friendly approach to booking your next vacation.

There has been much coverage in recent days of Australian travellers' travails. Indonesia, a perennial favourite for budget tourists, has been central. In Bali, we have witnessed the woes of a New South Wales teenager busted for dope possession, as well as the plight of a Melbourne football identity and his family who were set upon in a nightclub. In Lombok, it has been a tale of a Newcastle nurse who suffered brain and kidney damage after unknowingly drinking a cocktail laced with methanol.

These are sad and alarming stories. They highlight the dangers of travel but they should be kept in perspective: the overwhelming majority of tourists enjoy their time away and return home happy and well.

Many of them, though, may well be returning home having inadvertently damaged the holiday destinations they visited, as well as having missed a richer cultural experience.

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Veteran traveller and writer Tom Neal Tacker is here in The Zone to enlighten people about the effects they are having on environments and communities, to encourage people to think differently about tourism and to even inspire experienced travellers and novices to change how they view and experience holidays away from home.

His overarching message is that people ought to be more informed before they leave and more considerate while they are away. He says people are not sufficiently aware of their consumer sovereignty — the power they have by selecting where and how they spend their money.

The way to exercise that power, and a key way to become informed, is to ask questions before booking transport and accommodation.

"For instance, how many other visitors will be there when I'm there? What sort of impact does the tourism industry have on this particular country or region within the country? What sort of impact does my actual travel have on not only the trip itself but on the world's environment?

"Do I really need to fly 16 hours to go somewhere where I'm only going to go to stay five days? Why would I not consider taking a trip within Australia itself by train or going by coach or even driving somewhere? We all know that as soon as you board an aircraft and you fly with however many people on board, your greenhouse gas emissions are much greater using that mode of transport than any other."

As to what people might want to check before they book, Tacker has these thoughts about what to ask travel and destination operators:

"What sort of systems do you have in place for adequate waste removal or recycling? What sort of systems do you have in place for reducing your carbon credits in terms of where you're getting your food from? Are you trying to source as locally as possible or are you shipping stuff in from the other side of the planet?"

It's a planet Tacker is, above all, urging people to explore. It's a planet, though, that lacks a system of eco-accreditation, which puts the onus even more heavily on travellers to spend time on research. If you do not have a web connection, free access is available at public libraries.

There is no simple answer to the accreditation question. A global body would be bureaucratic, lumbering and open to corruption. But so too is self-regulation, so tourists need to take responsibility. This goes well beyond the idea that one can select not to have towels and sheets laundered daily.

"That was a start. But now we're getting to the point where certain businesses — hotels, lodges in various parts of the world — are claiming a certain degree of eco-awareness or eco-co-operation simply through changing light globes in rooms. But they are still not addressing the problems of rubbish removal, recycling of waste, water usage, being water-safe, fair employment, what sort of impact they may have on the local culture and society and religious mores.

"None of these things are being taken into account, and it's very self-regulated. And it's very easy to rort a system which is on a small scale being self-regulated."

The history of public policy is replete with what politicians coyly concede to be "unintended consequences". One such consequence Tacker has discovered is that being listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site can be "the kiss of death".

Consider Vietnam's Ha Long Bay, feted for its limestone formations. Vietnamese authorities have used the listing to spruik the destination, and tourism has boomed.

"The limestone outcrops that stick up in the bay are quite stunning — as long as you do not look in the water. It has now been inundated by visitors from around the world, and there is not still the infrastructure in place to clean up after the people have left. We're talking about dozens and dozens of boats where people are just tossing their rubbish overboard . . . The water is just full of plastic bottles and plastic bags."

Plastic has become a massive problem throughout Asia, in particular, and yet the solution is simple.

Were tourists to take their own shopping bags and water bottles, it would make a huge difference. There is limited waste management and no recycling facility on Bali, for example, where the annual number of tourists exceeds the permanent population.

"If you look at most of the freshwater streams running through central Bali, there are just plastic bottles floating everywhere. There are plastic bags hanging in the trees. There is rubbish everywhere."

Read the full article at: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/happy-holidays-20111016-1lri9.html

Grumpy Old Man: Water, Water everywhere…and its bottled!

I love this Grumpy Old Man post – this issue drives me nuts! – Lisa

I had an experience in a restaurant last week when the bill arrived for the meal and included $20 for two bottles of still water!

"how much??"

This is becoming something of a habit with restaurants and no doubt quite a profitable one.

It got me thinking that we actually can pay more for water than petrol! How strange is this? I am sure most of us would be more than satisfied with water from the tap. It is after all chlorinated and has helped reduce the instances of tooth decay in the community very significantly over the years since its introduction.

The infrastructure for delivery of tap water is well and truly in place, whereas the production/distribution of bottled water is most definitely using finite resources … typically PET bottles which can be a derivative of fossil fuel.

The transportation costs are high, the labelling and closures are energy-sapping and of course the cost of displaying in the various retail outlets incurs electricity on-costs etc. Also not forgetting the proper disposal of the empty bottles … more energy usage to collect and regrade into usable pellets for use in making recycled items such as park benches. An attempt to balance the growing usage?

So why are we consuming copious quantities of bottled water? In the restaurant case referred to above, the water was in fact from Italy for heaven’s sake! Add the transportation costs for that and maybe it helps explain the exhorbitant restaurant price?

Many consumers would not be aware that Australia’s most popular water drink is supplied by the company who own possibly the largest selling carbonated beverage in the country … Coke.

So why don’t we grasp reality and simply make sure we drink tap water rather than bottled and/or flavoured water?

I would welcome feedback on this, as it has me very grumpy and confused as to why we have this amazing scenario, which in many cases costs a packet across all measures … environmental and our hip pockets.

Till the next time

GOM

Upcycled Plastic Water Bottles become Incredible Art Bowls

Follow me derekmarkham by derekmarkham Upcycled Plastic Water Bottles become Incredible Art Bowls PET water bottles are everywhere, mostly used only once, but artist Gülnur Özdağlar shows us how to upcycle them into works of art We’ve seen some outstanding examples of waste-to-resource thinking for plastic soda bottles lately, from stylish shirts to dog beds, messenger bags, and even whole houses. Well, here’s a new one: Art bowls made from PET bottles. Architect Gülnur Özdağlar has been creating bowls, cups, jewelry and home decorations from old PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) bottles since 2008. She collects the bottles, then cuts, heats, drills holes and reshapes them into amazing creations. The object for Gülnur is to “substitute with labour and artistic value the characteristics that the material loses during transformation”, thereby obtaining a product of higher value. She aims to create beautiful new objects from discarded things so that we would want to exhibit or wear them, highlighting the importance of recycling and thus encouraging it. Her blog and Etsy store are named “Tertium Non Data”, which is Latin for “the third is not given” - a reference to an alchemic term relating to the process of combining two disparate elements to create a new, third element. Gülnur’s work is an amazing example of how everyday objects, in the hands of an artist, become works of art - not only that, but works of art made from one of the worst environmental scourges of our time. If you’d like to try your hand at creating your own PET bottle bowls, she has a great tutorial on it atInstructables: Make an art bowl from pet bottle. ”After heating process, it becomes more stiff, rigid, durable and glassy. It becomes even stronger and crystallized when perforated. This re-formed and perforated second life as a bowl is longer than the original bottle.” Be sure to check out Gülnur Özdağlar’s website, blog, and Etsy store for more information on her work, which also includes jewelry from PET bottles. via If It's Hip It's Here

What is the Life Cycle of a Plastic Bottle?

From an article at WiseGeek

Plastic bottles are used to package a wide variety of things, from juice to soft drinks, and they play a ubiquitous role in the lives of many consumers, along with other plastic products. With a growing awareness of the environmental issues which surround plastics, many people have become interested in the life cycles of plastic products, from manufacturing to eventual disposition in a landfill or recycling facility. Being aware of the process behind the production of plastics can encourage consumers to think more carefully about how they use and dispose of such plastics. Because plastic bottles are a very visible form of plastic use, plastic bottles make an easy target for activism and education.

The life cycle of a plastic bottle starts, obviously, with the creation of the plastic used to make it. The vast majority of plastic bottles are manufactured from petroleum, some of which comes from deposits as much as three billion years old. Some manufacturers use bioplastics made from plant materials to create their plastic bottles, out of concern for the environment.

In the case of a plastic bottle made from petroleum, the oil must be extracted before being shipped to a processing facility and then distilled to separate out the various hydrocarbons it contains. Oil extraction is performed all over the world in a variety of locations, and it has a number of environmental impacts. In areas where oil is drilled from the seafloor, for example, oil spills are common, and regions like the Middle East are famous for their heavily polluting oil fires, caused by intentional or accidental combustion of oil fields. In some nations, oil extraction is also bound up with a number of social issues. Nigeria, for instance, has an oil industry notoriously plagued with problems; oil workers are often poorly paid and exposed to very hazardous conditions, and periodic devastating fires along oil pipelines are not uncommon.

Once oil has been extracted, it is typically moved into container tankers for shipping to refinery facilities. At a refinery, the oil can be submitted to a variety of distillation processes, such as fractional distillation, where the crude oil is heated, causing its various components to separate so that the refinery can make gas, fuel oil, plastics, and a variety of other products. Crude oil can also be “cracked” with chemical catalysts to generate hydrocarbon chains of a desired length; this practice is common, because demand for various petroleum products constantly fluctuates, and cracking ensures that oil is used extremely efficiently and generates the maximum possible profit.

What is the Life Cycle of a Plastic Bottle?

from an article on WiseGeek
Plastic bottles are used to package a wide variety of things, from juice to soft drinks, and they play a ubiquitous role in the lives of many consumers, along with other plastic products. With a growing awareness of the environmental issues which surround plastics, many people have become interested in the life cycles of plastic products, from manufacturing to eventual disposition in a landfill or recycling facility. Being aware of the process behind the production of plastics can encourage consumers to think more carefully about how they use and dispose of such plastics. Because plastic bottles are a very visible form of plastic use, plastic bottles make an easy target for activism and education.

The life cycle of a plastic bottle starts, obviously, with the creation of the plastic used to make it. The vast majority of plastic bottles are manufactured from petroleum, some of which comes from deposits as much as three billion years old. Some manufacturers use bioplastics made from plant materials to create their plastic bottles, out of concern for the environment.

In the case of a plastic bottle made from petroleum, the oil must be extracted before being shipped to a processing facility and then distilled to separate out the various hydrocarbons it contains. Oil extraction is performed all over the world in a variety of locations, and it has a number of environmental impacts. In areas where oil is drilled from the seafloor, for example, oil spills are common, and regions like the Middle East are famous for their heavily polluting oil fires, caused by intentional or accidental combustion of oil fields. In some nations, oil extraction is also bound up with a number of social issues. Nigeria, for instance, has an oil industry notoriously plagued with problems; oil workers are often poorly paid and exposed to very hazardous conditions, and periodic devastating fires along oil pipelines are not uncommon.

Once oil has been extracted, it is typically moved into container tankers for shipping to refinery facilities. At a refinery, the oil can be submitted to a variety of distillation processes, such as fractional distillation, where the crude oil is heated, causing its various components to separate so that the refinery can make gas, fuel oil, plastics, and a variety of other products. Crude oil can also be “cracked” with chemical catalysts to generate hydrocarbon chains of a desired length; this practice is common, because demand for various petroleum products constantly fluctuates, and cracking ensures that oil is used extremely efficiently and generates the maximum possible profit.

Most plastic bottles are made from polyethylene terephtalate (PET) plastic, and almost all water bottles come from virgin plastic; an estimated 30% of the world's PET goes into plastic bottles. The plastic used in plastic bottles is made by mixing hydrocarbons extracted from crude oil with chemical catalysts, triggering polymerization. Next, manufacturers produce plastic pellets, which are melted down into “preforms,” which look like small test tubes; the preforms, in turn, can be heated, causing them to expand and turn into conventional water bottles. Typically bottling companies order preforms, expanding the water bottles at their own facilities as needed.

Bottled water Industry feels bubblers are "stupid"

In a press release the ABWI CEO, Geoff Parker, wrote:

"Replacing the option of bottled water with a convoluted scheme of filling stations and refillable bottles is stupid"

Hmmm. So drilling for oil, shipping it around the world, turning it into plastic, shipping it around the world, using energy to make it into a bottle, filling it with water (from a filling station?) loading it on a truck, driving it around the country, sticking it in a fridge, making people pay for it, then throwing away the bottle, which is picked up by a truck, driven around the country, buried in a hole in the ground, where it breaks down into little pieces, finds its way into the food chain, ..... now that would not be stupid would it? Not nearly as stupid as delivering cold, fresh. clean. unpackaged water by pipe for virtually free?

the work (and play) of unbottling your water

5 reasons not to drink bottled water It's expensive, wasteful and -- contrary to popular belief -- not any healthier for you than tap water. By Chris BaskindMon, Mar 15 2010 at 12:04 PM EST 143 Comments BOTTLES, BOTTLES EVERYWHERE: Bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. (Photo: quinn.anya/Flickr) Bottled water is healthy water — or so marketers would have us believe. Just look at the labels or the bottled water ads: deep, pristine pools of spring water; majestic alpine peaks; healthy, active people gulping down icy bottled water between biking in the park and a trip to the yoga studio.   In reality, bottled water is just water. That fact isn't stopping people from buying a lot of it. Estimates variously place worldwide bottled water sales at between $50 and $100 billion each year, with the market expanding at the startling annual rate of 7 percent.   Bottled water is big business. But in terms of sustainability, bottled water is a dry well. It's costly, wasteful and distracts from the brass ring of public health: the construction and maintenance of safe municipal water systems.   Want some solid reasons to kick the bottled water habit? We've rounded up five to get you started.   1) Bottled water isn't a good value Take, for instance, Pepsi's Aquafina or Coca-Cola's Dasani bottled water. Both are sold in 20 ounce sizes and can be purchased from vending machines alongside soft drinks — and at the same price. Assuming you can find a $1 machine, that works out to 5 cents an ounce. These two brands are essentially filtered tap water, bottled close to their distribution point. Most municipal water costs less than 1 cent per gallon.   Now consider another widely sold liquid: gasoline. It has to be pumped out of the ground in the form of crude oil, shipped to a refinery (often halfway across the world), and shipped again to your local filling station.   In the U.S., the average price per gallon is hovering around $3. There are 128 ounces in a gallon, which puts the current price of gasoline at a fraction over 2 cents an ounce.   And that's why there's no shortage of companies that want to get into the business. In terms of price versus production cost, bottled water puts Big Oil to shame.   2) No healthier than tap water In theory, bottled water in the United States falls under the regulatory authority of the Food and Drug Administration. In practice, about 70 percent of bottled water never crosses state lines for sale, making it exempt from FDA oversight.   On the other hand, water systems in the developed world are well-regulated. In the U.S., for instance, municipal water falls under the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency, and is regularly inspected for bacteria and toxic chemicals. Want to know how your community scores? Check out the Environmental Working Group'sNational Tap Water Database.   While public safety groups correctly point out that many municipal water systems are aging and there remain hundreds of chemical contaminants for which no standards have been established, there's very little empirical evidence that suggests bottled water is any cleaner or better for you than its tap equivalent.   3) Bottled water means garbage Bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. According to Food and Water Watch, that plastic requires up to 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce. And while the plastic used to bottle beverages is of high quality and in demand by recyclers, over 80 percent of plastic bottles are simply thrown away.   That assumes empty bottles actually make it to a garbage can. Plastic waste is now at such a volume that vast eddies of current-bound plastic trash now spin endlessly in the world's major oceans. This represents a great risk to marine life, killing birds and fish which mistake our garbage for food.   Thanks to its slow decay rate, the vast majority of all plastics ever produced still exist — somewhere.   4) Bottled water means less attention to public systems Many people drink bottled water because they don't like the taste of their local tap water, or because they question its safety.   This is like running around with a slow leak in your tire, topping it off every few days rather than taking it to be patched. Only the very affluent can afford to switch their water consumption to bottled sources. Once distanced from public systems, these consumers have little incentive to support bond issues and other methods of upgrading municipal water treatment.   There's plenty of need. In California, for example, the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated the requirement of $17.5 billion in improvements to the state's drinking water infrastructure as recently as 2005. In the same year, the state lost 222 million gallons of drinkable water to leaky pipes.   5) The corporatization of water In the documentary film Thirst, authors Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman demonstrated the rapid worldwide privatization of municipal water supplies, and the effect these purchases are having on local economies.   Water is being called the "Blue Gold" of the 21st century. Thanks to increasing urbanization and population, shifting climates and industrial pollution, fresh water is becoming humanity's most precious resource.   Multinational corporations are stepping in to purchase groundwater and distribution rights wherever they can, and the bottled water industry is an important component in their drive to commoditize what many feel is a basic human right: the access to safe and affordable water.   What can you do? There's a simple alternative to bottled water: buy a stainless steel thermos, and use it. Don't like the way your local tap water tastes? Inexpensive carbon filters will turn most tap water sparkling fresh at a fraction of bottled water's cost.   Consider taking Food and Water Watch's No Bottled Water Pledge. Conserve water wherever possible, and stay on top of local water issues. Want to know more? Start with the Sierra Club's fact sheet on bottled water.   Bottoms up!   Copyright Lighter Footstep 2008

when did you last make your own choice about water?

Database of advertising slogans for water

Uni weighs bottled water ban

 from The Canberra Times

BY PHILLIP THOMSON

28 Oct, 2010 09:31 AM

The University of Canberra is considering banning the sale of bottled water, which could be a $100,000 loss for campus retailers.

The move had some of the university's 8000-plus students worried the Bundanoon-style ban to become Australia's first bottled water-free campus may increase the sale of unhealthier soft drinks.

University management has already decided to install cold water bubblers and will now consider the ban suggested by a group of students. The bubblers will allow students to fill up re-usable plastic bottles as opposed to buying fresh ones.

The ban is a continuation of the ACT's war on environmentally unfriendly plastic, with the territory Government expected today to succeed in the Legislative Assembly to ban plastic shopping bags.

Between 50,000 and 60,000 plastic bottles of water are sold at the University of Canberra every year. The University of Canberra Student Association broadly supports the ban but has reservations about some of the details.
For more on this story, including comments that revellers at university festivals should still be able to buy water, and that the move may lead to the sale of more soft drinks, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.

Message in a Bottle~7th,& 8th installment of this excellent in depth article from Fast Company

 Jim Siplon, an American who manages Fiji Water's 10-year-old bottling plant in Fiji, has arranged the grog ceremony. "This is the soul of Fiji Water," he says. The ceremony lasts 45 minutes and goes through four rounds of grog, which tastes a little furry. Marika is interrupted twice by his cell phone, which he pulls from a pocket in his skirt. It is shift change at the plant, and Marika coordinates the minibus network that transports villagers to and from work.

Fiji Water is the product of these villages, a South Pacific aquifer, and a state-of-the-art bottling plant in a part of Fiji even the locals consider remote. The plant, on the northeast coast of Fiji's main island of Viti Levu, is a white two-story building that looks like a 1970s-era junior high school. The entrance faces the interior of Viti Levu and a cloud-shrouded ridge of volcanic mountains.

Inside, the plant is in almost every way indistinguishable from Pellegrino's plant in Italy, or Poland Spring's in Hollis, filled with computer-controlled bottle-making and bottle-filling equipment. Line number two can spin out 1 million bottles of Fiji Water a day, enough to load 40 20-foot shipping containers; the factory has three lines.

The plant employs 200 islanders--set to increase to 250 this year--most with just a sixth- or eighth-grade education. Even the entry-level jobs pay twice the informal minimum wage. But these are more than simply jobs--they are jobs in a modern factory, in a place where there aren't jobs of any sort beyond the villages. And the jobs are just part of an ecosystem emerging around the plant--water-based trickle-down economics, as it were.

Siplon, a veteran telecom manager from MCI, wants Fiji Water to feel like a local company in Fiji. (It was purchased in 2004 by privately owned Roll International, which also owns POM Wonderful and is one of the largest producers of nuts in the United States.) He uses a nearby company to print the carrying handles for Fiji Water six-packs and buys engineering services and cardboard boxes on the island. By long-standing arrangement, the plant has seeded a small business in the villages that contracts with the plant to provide landscaping and security, and runs the bus system that Marika helps manage.

In 2007, Fiji Water will mark a milestone. "Even though you can drive for hours and hours on this island past cane fields," says Siplon, "sometime this year, Fiji Water will eclipse sugarcane as the number-one export." That is, the amount of sugar harvested and processed for export by some 40,000 seasonal sugar workers will equal in dollar value the amount of water bottled and shipped by 200 water bottlers.

However we regard Fiji Water in the United States--essential accessory, harmless treat, or frivolous excess--the closer you get to the source of its water, the more significant the enterprise looks.

No, no coconut-fiber filtering, but rather, a toehold in the global economy. Are 10,000 Fijians benefiting? Not directly. Perhaps 2,000. But Fiji Water is providing something else to a tiny nation of 850,000 people, which has been buffeted by two coups in seven years, and the collapse of its gold-mining and textiles industries: inspiration, a vision of what the country might have to offer the rest of the world. Developed countries are keen for myriad variations on just what Fiji Water is--a pure, unadulterated, organic, and natural product. Fiji has whole vistas of untouched, organic-ready farmland. Indeed, the hottest topic this spring (beyond politics) was how to jump-start an organic-sugar industry.

Of course, the irony of shipping a precious product from a country without reliable water service is hard to avoid. This spring, typhoid from contaminated drinking water swept one of Fiji's islands, sickening dozens of villagers and killing at least one. Fiji Water often quietly supplies emergency drinking water in such cases. The reality is, if Fiji Water weren't tapping its aquifer, the underground water would slide into the Pacific Ocean, somewhere just off the coast. But the corresponding reality is, someone else--the Fijian government, an NGO--could be tapping that supply and sending it through a pipe to villagers who need it. Fiji Water has, in fact, done just that, to some degree--20 water projects in the five nearby villages. Indeed, Roll has reinvested every dollar of profit since 2004 back into the business and the island.

Siplon acknowledges the risk of slipping into capitalistic neo-colonialism. "Does the world need Fiji Water?" he asks. "I'm not sure I agree with the critics on that. This company has the potential of delivering great value--or the results a cynic might have expected."

Water is, in fact, often the perfect beverage--healthy, refreshing, and satisfying in a way soda or juice aren't. A good choice.

Nestlé Waters' Kim Jeffery may be defending his industry when he calls bottled water "a force of nature," but he's also not wrong. Our consumption of bottled water has outstripped any marketer's dreams or talent: If you break out the single-serve plastic bottle as its own category, our consumption of bottled water grew a thousandfold between 1984 and 2005.

In the array of styles, choices, moods, and messages available today, water has come to signify how we think of ourselves. We want to brand ourselves--as Madonna did--even with something as ordinary as a drink of water. We imagine there is a difference between showing up at the weekly staff meeting with Aquafina, or Fiji, or a small glass bottle of Pellegrino. Which is, of course, a little silly.

Bottled water is not a sin. But it is a choice.

Packing bottled water in lunch boxes, grabbing a half-liter from the fridge as we dash out the door, piling up half-finished bottles in the car cup holders--that happens because of a fundamental thoughtlessness. It's only marginally more trouble to have reusable water bottles, cleaned and filled and tucked in the lunch box or the fridge. We just can't be bothered. And in a world in which 1 billion people have no reliable source of drinking water, and 3,000 children a day die from diseases caught from tainted water, that conspicuous consumption of bottled water that we don't need seems wasteful, and perhaps cavalier.

That is the sense in which Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, and Singer, the Princeton philosopher, are both right. Mackey is right that buying bottled water is a choice, and Singer is right that given the impact it has, the easy substitutes, and the thoughtless spending involved, it's fair to ask whether it's always a good choice.

The most common question the U.S. employees of Fiji Water still get is, "Does it really come from Fiji?" We're choosing Fiji Water because of the hibiscus blossom on the beautiful square bottle, we're choosing it because of the silky taste. We're seduced by the idea of a bottle of water from Fiji. We just don't believe it really comes from Fiji. What kind of a choice is that?

Once you understand the resources mustered to deliver the bottle of water, it's reasonable to ask as you reach for the next bottle, not just "Does the value to me equal the 99 cents I'm about to spend?" but "Does the value equal the impact I'm about to leave behind?"

Simply asking the question takes the carelessness out of the transaction. And once you understand where the water comes from, and how it got here, it's hard to look at that bottle in the same way again.

Message in a Bottle ~ 4th installment

n the late 1800s, Poland Spring was already a renowned brand of healthful drinking water that you could get home-delivered in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago. It was also a sprawling summer resort complex, with thousands of guests and three Victorian hotels, some of which had bathtubs with spigots that allowed guests to bathe in Poland Spring water. The resort burned in 1976, but at the crest of a hill in Poland Spring, Maine, you can still visit a marble-and-granite temple built in 1906 to house the original spring.

24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi.

The car, the Depression, World War II, and perhaps most important, clean, safe municipal water, unwound the resorts and the first wave of water as business. We had to wait two generations for the second, which would turn out to be much different--and much larger.

Today, for all the apparent variety on the shelf, bottled water is dominated in the United States and worldwide by four huge companies. Pepsi has the nation's number-one-selling bottled water, Aquafina, with 13% of the market.Coke's Dasani is number two, with 11% of the market. Both are simply purified municipal water--so 24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi for our convenience. Evian is owned by Danone, the French food giant, and distributed in the United States by Coke.

The really big water company in the United States is Nestlé, which gradually bought up the nation's heritage brands, and expanded them. The waters are slightly different--springwater must come from actual springs, identified specifically on the label--but together, they add up to 26% of the market, according to Beverage Marketing, surpassing Coke and Pepsi's brands combined.

Since most water brands are owned by larger companies, it's hard to get directly at the economics. But according to those inside the business, half the price of a typical $1.29 bottle goes to the retailer. As much as a third goes to the distributor and transport. Another 12 to 15 cents is the cost of the water itself, the bottle and the cap. That leaves roughly a dime of profit. On multipacks, that profit is more like 2 cents a bottle.

As the abundance in the supermarket water aisle shows, that business is now trying to help us find new waters to drink and new occasions for drinking them--trying to get more mouth share, as it were. Aquafina marketing vice president Ahad Afridi says his team has done the research to understand what kind of water drinkers we are. They've found six types, including the "water pure-fectionist"; the "water explorer"; the "image seeker"; and the "struggler" ("they don't really like water that much...these are the people who have a cheeseburger with a diet soda").

It's a startling level of thought and analysis--until you realize that within a decade, our consumption of bottled water is expected to surpass soda. That kind of market can't be left to chance. Aquafina's fine segmentation is all about the newest explosion of waters that aren't really water--flavored waters, enhanced waters, colored waters, water drinks branded after everything from Special K breakfast cereal to Tropicana juice.

Afridi is a true believer. He talks about water as if it were more than a drink, more than a product--as if it were a character all its own, a superhero ready to take the pure-fectionist, the water explorer, and the struggler by the hand and carry them to new water adventures. "Water as a beverage has more right to extend and enter into more territories than any other beverage," Afridi says. "Water has a right to travel where others can't."

Uh, meaning what?

"Water that's got vitamins in it. Water that's got some immunity-type benefit to it. Water that helps keep skin younger. Water that gives you energy."

Water: It's pure, it's healthy, it's perfect--and we've made it better. The future of water sounds distinctly unlike water.

The label on a bottle of Fiji Water says "from the islands of Fiji." Journey to the source of that water, and you realize just how extraordinary that promise is. From New York, for instance, it is an 18-hour plane ride west and south (via Los Angeles) almost to Australia, and then a four-hour drive along Fiji's two-lane King's Highway.

Message in a Bottle

day one in an eight day article:

Americans spent more money last year on bottled water than on ipods or movie tickets: $15 Billion. A journey into the economics--and psychology--of an unlikely business boom. And what it says about our culture of indulgence.

From an article at Fast Company 
  BY: CHARLES FISHMAN

The largest bottled-water factory in North America is located on the outskirts of Hollis, Maine. In the back of the plant stretches the staging area for finished product: 24 million bottles of Poland Spring water. As far as the eye can see, there are double-stacked pallets packed with half-pint bottles, half-liters, liters, "Aquapods" for school lunches, and 2.5-gallon jugs for the refrigerator.

Really, it is a lake of Poland Spring water, conveniently celled off in plastic, extending across 6 acres, 8 feet high. A week ago, the lake was still underground; within five days, it will all be gone, to supermarkets and convenience stores across the Northeast, replaced by another lake's worth of bottles.

Looking at the piles of water, you can have only one thought: Americans sure are thirsty.

Bottled water has become the indispensable prop in our lives and our culture. It starts the day in lunch boxes; it goes to every meeting, lecture hall, and soccer match; it's in our cubicles at work; in the cup holder of the treadmill at the gym; and it's rattling around half-finished on the floor of every minivan in America. Fiji Water shows up on the ABC show Brothers & Sisters; Poland Spring cameos routinely on NBC's The Office. Every hotel room offers bottled water for sale, alongside the increasingly ignored ice bucket and drinking glasses. At Whole Foods, the upscale emporium of the organic and exotic, bottled water is the number-one item by units sold.

Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets--$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year.

Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We--a generation raised on tap water and water fountains--drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we're raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion. We've come to pay good money--two or three or four times the cost of gasoline--for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes.

When we buy a bottle of water, what we're often buying is the bottle itself, as much as the water. We're buying the convenience--a bottle at the 7-Eleven isn't the same product as tap water, any more than a cup of coffee at Starbucks is the same as a cup of coffee from the Krups machine on your kitchen counter. And we're buying the artful story the water companies tell us about the water: where it comes from, how healthy it is, what it says about us. Surely among the choices we can make, bottled water isn't just good, it's positively virtuous.

Except for this: Bottled water is often simply an indulgence, and despite the stories we tell ourselves, it is not a benign indulgence. We're moving 1 billion bottles of water around a week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone. That's a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. (Water weighs 81/3 pounds a gallon. It's so heavy you can't fill an 18-wheeler with bottled water--you have to leave empty space.)

Meanwhile, one out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water. The global economy has contrived to deny the most fundamental element of life to 1 billion people, while delivering to us an array of water "varieties" from around the globe, not one of which we actually need. That tension is only complicated by the fact that if we suddenly decided not to purchase the lake of Poland Spring water in Hollis, Maine, none of that water would find its way to people who really are thirsty.

A chilled plastic bottle of water in the convenience-store cooler is the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture. It acknowledges our demand for instant gratification, our vanity, our token concern for health. Its packaging and transport depend entirely on cheap fossil fuel. Yes, it's just a bottle of water--modest compared with the indulgence of driving a Hummer. But when a whole industry grows up around supplying us with something we don't need--when a whole industry is built on the packaging and the presentation--it's worth asking how that happened, and what the impact is. And if you do ask, if you trace both the water and the business back to where they came from, you find a story more complicated, more bemusing, and ultimately more sobering than the bottles we tote everywhere suggest.

In the town of San Pellegrino Terme, Italy, for example, is a spigot that runs all the time, providing San Pellegrino water free to the local citizens--except the free Pellegrino has no bubbles. Pellegrino trucks in the bubbles for the bottling plant. The man who first brought bottled water to the United States famously failed an impromptu taste test involving his own product. In Maine, there is a marble temple to honor our passion for bottled water.

continued tomorrow