Bottled Buyers Be Informed

In case you are still purchasing bottled water, here is a little background on what those labels and titles really mean from Peter H Gleick's research for Bottled & Sold.

More Bottled B*llsh*t

Found on the shelves of Marshalls - for a "bargain" price of course. I think my fave is the "Eternal" brand from New Zealand.

Marketing Water

Ahhh.... BANa and their "serious re ydration." Another pseudo-scientific bottled water scam. As the saying goes, a good advertiser can convince us to buy something we don't want or need. And as Peter Gleick (and probably a bunch of marketing folks) say, "A great advertiser can convince us to pay a thousand times more than we're already paying for something we already have - like water."

A few short weeks ago a federal judge ruled that Glaceau Brands has been falsely advertising Vitaminwater as healthy, but it turns out this particular type of fraud has been alive and well for centuries. As early as 1630 a Massachusetts merchant was fined for profiting off of extravagant and questionable claims that his special water could cure scurvy. Everyone has heard of the term "snake oil," right? Well, turns out we still fall for this sh*t. See if you can match up the following claims/slogans with their brands:

(A) Penta (B) Evian (C) Fiji Artesian Water (D) Poland Spring (E) Dasani (F) Infinity Water (G) Contrex (H) Aquafina (I) smartwater (J) Adirondack

1.) Can't live without it.
2.) Far from pollution. Far from acid rain. Far from industrial waste.
3.) Sip smarter. Live longer.
4.) Your natural source of youth.
5.) Ultra-purified, antioxidant water. Pure energized water with no additives.
6.) The oldest way to stay young.
7.) Pure water. Perfect taste.
8.) My slimness partner.
9.) Pure as the first drop of rain.
10.) As refreshing as the mountains.

Answers: It really doesn't matter cause it's all bullsh*t but here you go [1.E; 2.C; 3.D; 4.B; 5.A; 6.F; 7.H; 8.G; 9.I; 10. J]

Economic, Environmental and Social Blindness

     "...Sometimes we're misled by intensive advertising into believing that this or that brand of commercial water will make us healthier, skinnier or more popular.
     So we've turned to the bottle, convinced that paying a thousand times more for individually packaged plastic throwaway containers of water than for readily available tap water is an act of rationality rather than economic, environmental and social blindness... We should not lose sight of the poorest countries of the world, who have neither safe tap water nor money to buy bottles of water drink whatever is available, get sick, and often die. This dichotomy leads to a strange reality: Suburban shoppers in America lug cases of plastic water bottles from the grocery store back to homes supplied with unlimited piped potable water in a sad and unintentional parody of the labor of girls and women in Africa, who spend backbreaking hours carrying containers of filthy water from distant contaminated sources to homes with no water at all..."
          - Peter H.Gleick; Author of Bottled & Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water

Now more than halfway through Bottled and Sold, I have found myself preachier than ever on a subject I've typically been somewhat passive on in public. Opting for a glass of ice water or refilling my reusable bottle, like saying "no thanks" to red meat, no longer feels like enough so JustSaying is dedicating the month of August to disseminating the information in this book to our readers.

We'll talk about the difference between "Artesian," "Spring," "Purified" and "Mineral;" the state of our municipal water system; percieved versus actual regulations; recycling efforts or lack thereof; and the marketing efforts that have misled so many and generated tens of billions of dollars in sales.

For today, I will just ask you what Gleick asks often throughout his pages: Think about where you are right now, will be later this afternoon, when your out and about and so on. How far away is the nearest faucet with safe water? Probably not far. Yet for every second of every day a thousand people in the United States purchase and open a bottle of water. Not even close to half of those bottles get recycled. Just saying.

Vitamin Water is Officially Unhealthy

Last week a federal judge ruled that Glaceau Brands (aka Coca Cola) has been falsely advertising Vitaminwater as healthy. The Consumerist reports:

"...Vitaminwater will not, as its labels promise, keep you "healthy as a horse." Nor will it bring about a "healthy state of physical or mental being". Instead, Vitaminwater is really just a sugary snack food; non-carbonated fruit coke disguised as a sports drink. Because it's composed mostly of sugar and not vitamin-laden water, judge John Gleeson held that Vitaminwater's absurd marketing claims were likely to mislead consumers."

How did we fall for this to begin with?

If the toll on the environment isn't enough to turn you off bottled water and get you turning on the tap, perhaps a little summer reading on the subject will do the trick. We're adding MacArther Fellow and freshwater expert Peter Gleick's new book to our summer reading list. In Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, Gleick chronicles how water went from a free natural resource to one of the most successful commercial products in less than a century. Read The Washington Post review on it here and find a great deal on a used copy or Kindle download here.

And of course we highly recommend adding Peter's blog to your feed.

CU Boulder considers plastic water bottle ban

The University of Colorado at Boulder, ranked by Sierra Magazine as the number one green school in the nation for 2009, plans to build on their accolades this year with some ambitious projects including a possible ban on bottled water.

Still in the early stages, leaders in the sustainability projects on campus are considering the possible cnsequences of such a ban - students opting for less-healthy (and still bottled) soda instead, and
 the scholorship program that benefits from the funds (approximately $280,000 yearly) brought in by vending machines.

Other initiatives on the table for 2010 include:

- Re-using water from sinks and showers to flush toilets
- Discontinued printing mass copies of phone directories
- Solar-powered trash compactors
- Ways to keep students from shaving in the shower (wasting water)
- And switching the schools fleet of hybrid cars to plug-in hybrids

Hopefully the young adults and faculty advisors who are striving for sustainability at CU Boulder will inspire folks at universities nationwide. Learn more here and here.

Uh oh

So there's a big story this week in the NY Times examining potential dangers of tap water - which, according to the latest data from the EPA, is not as carefully regulated as I/we once thought. This is a freakin' disaster for JustSaying's crusade against bottled water. Charles Duhigg reports:

"Only 91 contaminants are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used within the United States, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates. Government and independent scientists have scrutinized thousands of those chemicals in recent decades, and identified hundreds associated with a risk of cancer and other diseases at small concentrations in drinking water, according to an analysis of government records by The New York Times... But not one chemical has been added to the list of those regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2000...."

Okay okay... the system needs some attention and upgrades. The NY Times put up this great interactive allowing folks to look at the water systems in their respective states and districts. Seeing these chemicals listed as contaminents in local water systems is bound to scare people straight to Costco for cases of bottled water. The article continues:

"Drinking water that does not meet a federal health guideline will not necessarily make someone ill. Many contaminants are hazardous only if consumed for years. And some researchers argue that even toxic chemicals, when consumed at extremely low doses over long periods, pose few risks. Others argue that the cost of removing minute concentrations of chemicals from drinking water does not equal the benefits... Moreover, many of the thousands of chemicals that have not been analyzed may be harmless. And researchers caution that such science is complicated, often based on extrapolations from animal studies, and sometimes hard to apply nationwide, particularly given that more than 57,400 water systems in this country each deliver, essentially, a different glass of water every day."

However, independent studies published by the National Academy of Sciences suggest that contaminated water is the source of millions of Americans maladies (upset stomachs, birth defects, cancer) each year.

This is super tricky, folks. I urge you to read the article in its entirity here. Duhigg addresses the actual risk posed by small traces of arsenic (which is roughly equivalent to risks associated with receiving 1,664 x-rays although it sounds like it will turn us all into mutant ninja turtles); risks and studies surrounding the presesnce/development of bromates (particularly out in LA); a handful of contaminents associated with manufacturing pollution (some regulated, some not) such as perchlorate, trichloroethylene, perchloroethylene; other chemicals associated with liver and kidney disease (lead, mercury) and Parkinson's disease (manganese) and what the EPA intends to do about all this.

In a statement, the E.P.A. said that a top priority of Lisa P. Jackson, who took over the agency in January, was improving how regulators assessed and managed chemical hazards... “Since chemicals are ubiquitous in our economy, our environment, our water resources and our bodies, we need better authority so we can assure the public that any unacceptable risks have been eliminated,” the E.P.A. wrote. “But, under existing law, we cannot give that assurance.” ...Ms. Jackson has asked Congress to amend laws governing how the E.P.A. assesses chemicals, and has issued policies to insulate the agency’s scientific reviews from outside pressures. But for now, significant risks remain, say former regulators.

For a long time, I have sat complacent and content with my tap water and  urged those around me to trade their BPA rich plastic bottles in for reusable ones. But perhaps it's time I start putting a little more emphasis on home purification systems and a little less trust in the "America has the safest tap water" mantra I've undertaken up until reading this article.

Unfortunately, frog friend, you're not alone...

If you need another reason...

...to stop drinking bottled water (and trade in any dangerous Nalgene bottles for their new and improved BPA-free ones), read this article reporting the findings of an impromptu study performed at the Harvard School of Public Health. Some highlights:

...Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found that people who drank for a week from the clear plastic polycarbonate bottles increased concentrations of bisphenol A - or BPA - in their urine by 69 percent...

...Numerous animal studies in recent years suggest that low levels of BPA might cause developmental problems in fetuses and young children and other ill effects. The health effects on adults are not well understood although a recent large human study linked BPA concentrations in people's urine to an increased prevalence of diabetes, heart disease, and liver toxicity...

...Led by Jenny Carwile, a Harvard School of Public Health doctoral student, 77 Harvard students in the study drank all cold beverages from stainless steel bottles for a week to wash BPA out of their bodies and minimize exposure. Most BPA is flushed from people's bodies within a matter of hours. During that week, the students gave urine samples. Then the students were given two refillable polycarbonate bottles made with BPA to drink all cold beverages from for one week. Urine samples taken over that week showed the students' BPA levels spiked the second week to levels normally found in the general population. Because the students did nothing different in their schedules other than drink from the BPA bottles, the researchers determined their urine concentrations largely came from the bottles...