WE SHOULD STOP DRINKING BOTTLED WATER
WE SHOULD STOP DRINKING BOTTLED WATER
No one needs bottled water. There are many good reasons why we should not leave our water reserves to companies that then sell us the water as a product.
Bottling tap water has long become one of the most lucrative business models for food producers. For example, behind the Bonaqa brand is normal drinking water that has been spruced up a bit with minerals, and not natural mineral water. That is why it can only be sold as table water and not as mineral water in Germany.
In other words, corporations are making a profit from a publicly accessible good. To understand the problems that can arise from selling off drinking water to industrial companies, it is worth taking a look at Canada.
In Canada, a large part of the water in the water bottles comes from groundwater deposits near the Great Lakes, where it is pumped by companies for 3.71 CAD per million liters , who later resell it with a huge profit margin. Especially in this region there are many indigenous communities whose residents have had no access to their own fresh water source for decades and whose drinking water is trucked in by the ton in bottles. Of course, these bottles are produced by Nestlé and other large corporations.
Politicians and activists are demanding that the price that companies pay to pump the water in the municipal areas be raised. Some experts do not think this goes far enough. They are calling for a fundamental ban on the pumping of drinking water for profit-making purposes for social and scientific reasons. They are demanding that the respective local governments no longer renew the license of the main customer, Nestlé.
"If we consider water to be a public good, Nestlé or Coca Cola should no longer be allowed to pump it out in order to bottle it and then sell it to us at a high price. It should be permissible to acquire licenses for the use of water in a product - but water should not be allowed to be the product itself," explained Stephen Scharper, professor at the Faculty of Sustainability Management at the University of Toronto, in an interview with Motherboard.
"Ultimately, such an approach would mean that bottled water would disappear completely from the market," he concluded.
The commercial danger for water reserves
Harden Environmental Services, a groundwater testing company, stated in its latest report that Nestlé's water extraction in Canada has led to a drop in pressure in the aquifers of the deposits in some places. Such a loss of pressure can have devastating consequences for water resources: wells can dry up, and pollutants from the region's sewage treatment plants can spread to other areas and aquifers.
Given the increasing problems with the global water supply, this is not good news. In fact, every functioning well is likely to be more important than ever in the future, as the decline in water resources is now reaching dramatic proportions. Last year, NASA published data showing that approximately one-third of the world's largest groundwater reserves are acutely endangered. In light of the increasing droughts in many regions of the world due to climate change, we could really use these groundwater reserves, and there is a strong case for government control of the reserves to ensure that water extraction does not backfire.
The water quality argument
But there is another argument that shows how pointless bottling water is: all over the world, where there is effective, state-controlled water treatment, the quality of bottled water is generally no better than that of tap water. In 1999, for example, the American Natural Resources Defence Council produced a report showing that 25% of bottled water had no quality difference compared to tap water.
A test conducted by the city of Cleveland in 2006 found that Fiji brand bottled water even contained arsenic. In 2008, the European Environmental Working Group found that some bottled water brands were no different from tap water, and, on the contrary, the pollutant content even exceeded the legal limits in some cases.
The control argument
Finally, there is the advantage of regulation when the state is the supplier of drinking water: municipalities are legally obliged to make their annual reports on water quality publicly available, while the industry is monitored by consumer protection organisations, but not by environmental authorities.
Some manufacturers do publish quality reports, but it has often been criticised in the past that municipalities are bound by completely different standards and that the industry basically only monitors itself.
Emergency supply: A counter-argument?
A disadvantage of completely abolishing bottled drinking water, which is often pointed out, could be that plastic bottles, which can be quickly transported from A to B, can be a vital reserve in emergencies. For example, indigenous communities in Canada still rely on water bottles until the problems with their water supply are solved. However, according to Scharper, there is no reason why the bottling of water could not be taken over by the public authorities.
“If municipal services don't work, that's no reason why the industry should profit from it,” said Scharper. “If basic human rights are neglected, the government must intervene. It can provide water from a municipal source. You don't need the industry as an intermediary.”
We have also enforced serious bans in the past that affected the basis of our modern infrastructure. After decades of studies on the harmful effects of asbestos, for example, the use of the substance was banned despite its popularity in all buildings.
Another tough but effective example of a drastic political change can be found in Paris. Here, all cars that are 20 years or older have just been banned from the streets on weekdays to reduce air pollution.
Things are also happening when it comes to bottled water. Some cities have already started to gradually ban bottled water from supermarket shelves. In 2009, bottled water was even completely banned in Bundanoon, Australia. Two years ago, San Francisco decided to ban bottled water in public areas. So anything is possible with enough political will. No one needs industrially bottled tap water.