1. The History of Bottled Water
a. Royte emphasizes the fact that “the tap is alien to today’s youth.” Bottled water today is everywhere and everyone appears to be drinking it by the gallon. In fact, US sales of bottled water were 10.8 billion in 2006, a figure that surpasses both sales of beer and milk. Royte predicts soda will be next by 2011.
b. Water diversion has been occurring since the Roman times. By the 1700s water became popular for recreational and supposed medicinal purposes.
c. Royte traces the concept of “water chic” back to Perrier. Working with the British knight Sir Saint-John Harmsworth, Dr. Louis Perrier developed the water into an iconic brand at the end of the 1800s. Harmsworth started marketing the water as chic to British consumers, who appropriate the water as a status symbol. With the invention of the iconic green bottle, Perrier became a marketing wonder and starts the worldwide bottled water market.
2. Bottled water has become a status symbol/ fashion accessory/ and huge money maker
a. Bottled water is also a huge money maker for restaurants. It has the highest markup price of any item on a restaurant menu, and the restaurant industry makes between $200 and $250 million per year on bottled water sales alone.
3. Water Branding
a. In actuality, 44% of bottled water comes from municipal sources (25% according to the NRDC.
b. A new type of sustainable (bottled) water is emerging from Singapore: NEWater. This is reused wastewater. The popularity of this brand is yet to be seen. The success of this brand depends on excellent PR and marketing strategy.
4. The genius of the bottled water industry lies in its PR and marketing teams.
The discussion was then moved to specifically discuss a current water war in Fryeburg, Maine which Royte continuously refers back to in her book.
1. Fryeburg, Maine and the Ward’s Brook Aquifer
a. The Ward’s Brook Aquifer near Fryeburg, Maine can hold 8 billion gallons of water. Town and two commercial extractors pump out approximately 800,000 gallons per day from this aquifer.
b. Royte tells the story of Howard Dearborn, a local man who lives on Lovewell Pond, who accuses Poland Spring (a part of the Nestle corporation) of disrupting the ecosystem of the pond and of reducing the health of the pond. Because so much water is being extracted from the aquifer, there is a reduced amount of water flowing into the pond and this negatively affects the habitat. Hiring a hydrogeologist for his own investigative purposes as well as using his own well as an example, Dearborn crafts an argument against Poland Spring.
c. Local environmental costs are hard to define.
d. Nestle spends a lot of money hiring hydrogeologists to determine how much water can be used for spring water in the area. However, much of their research is based on computer modeling, which has its definite flaws. Nestle also has the money to hire hydrogeologists who will say whatever Nestle tells them to, causing Royte to refer to such hydrogeologists as “hydrostitutes.”
2. The Fryeburg Water Company was started in 1883 to supply the town with spring water. In 1995, the water infrastructure had to be updated and the discovery of the size of the Ward’s Brook aquifer led the heard of the water company to start making money off the aquifer. Starting the dummy company “Pure Mountain Spring,” the owners of the company began selling water to Poland Spring at incredibly high rates.
3. A number of ethical questions are raised: is it right to take a public resource and sell it? What does Nestle leave for the community? Et cetera…
4. Royte uses the situation in Fryeburg as a small example of a worldwide issue. Although the local community of Fryeburg was able to take measures against Nestle, it is still a David versus Goliath story. The privatization of water becomes a democratic issue and Royte insists we need to use stories such as the fight between Fryeburg and Nestle as an example of how large corporations can take advantage of local resources.
5. Royte emphasizes the fact that we need to resume drinking tap water!
We concluded with a small discussion of the assigned reading by Noel Gallagher, “Challenges Piling Up for Poland Spring.” This article reviewed a Maine state law enacted in 2007 which requires a more public review of extraction permit applications, regulates the impact of commercial extraction on the watershed, sets sustainability standards, and starts a new watershed and drinking water management program.
Also included in our presentation was a taste test of various bottled waters, tap water, spring water, and well water. Preliminary conclusions indicate that people notice very little difference between the two. Furthermore, FIJI water was specifically discussed. FIJI water is actually from Fiji, but this presents a sad reality that this expensive water is being extracted from a country with only a 48% rate of access to water sources. To see an example of “green washing” done by this company, just look at www.fijigreen.com.
Slides shown in lecture today are available as a .pdf on Sakai.
The my maps page has been updated with the locations mentioned in today's lecture.
Please read Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering by Charles Duhigg and Water Pollution and Human Health in China by Wu et al.. for Wednesday.
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