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The soft drink giant Pepsi has been forced to make an embarrassing admission – its best-selling Aquafina bottled water is nothing more than tap water. Pepsi has agreed to change its label under pressure from the advocacy group Corporate Accountability International (CAI) which has been leading an increasingly successful campaign against bottled water. We look at the economic and environmental costs of the bottled water industry with CAI’s Gigi Kellett and freelance journalist Michael Blanding. [includes rush transcript]
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The soft drink giant Pepsi has been forced to make an embarrassing admission – its best-selling Aquafina bottled water is nothing more than tap water. Last week Pepsi agreed to change the labels of Aquafina to indicate that the water comes from a public water source. Pepsi agreed to change its label under pressure from the advocacy group Corporate Accountability International which has been leading an increasingly successful campaign against bottled water.
In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom recently banned city departments from using city money to buy any kind of bottled water. In New York, local residents are being urged to drink tap water.The U.S. Conference of Mayors has passed a resolution that highlighted the importance of municipal water and called for more scrutiny of the impact of bottled water on city waste.
The environmental impact of the country’s obsession with bottled water has been staggering. Each day an estimated 60 million plastic water bottles are thrown away. Most are not recycled. The Pacific Institute has estimated 20 million barrels of oil are used each year to make the plastic for water bottles.
Economically it makes sense to stop buying bottled water as well. The Arizona Daily Star recently examined the cost difference between bottled water and water from the city’s municipal supply. A half liter of Pepsi’s Aquafina at a Tucson convenience store costs one dollar and thirty nine cents. The bottle contains purified water from the Tucson water supply. From the tap, you can pour over six point four gallons for a penny. That makes the bottled stuff about 7,000 times more expensive even though Aquafina is using the same source of water.
Two guests joins us from Boston:
Gigi Kellett. Associate Campaigns Director at Corporate Accountability International joins us in Boston. The group is spearheading the Think Outside the Bottle Campaign.
Michael Blanding. Freelance journalist and author of the article for Alternet.org “The Bottled Water Lie.”
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