Serving Bread

If you are reading this outside of America, your tap water may not be safe to drink. But for all Americans reading this post, drink more tap water.

The bottled water industry is on a high. Last year, Americans drank 8.25 billion gallons of bottled water, which was a 9.5% increase from the year before. We (Americans) love our bottled water. We buy more of it than any other beverage but soda (and the soda manufacturers must be somewhat worried considering both Pepsi and Coca Cola have their own bottled water brands). I invite you to drink tap water and commit (with me) to never purchase another bottled water again. (I know, I sound extreme, but read on!)

First, tap water is safe. In most municipalities in the United States, tap water is safe. Very safe. A recent Environmental Protection Agency report concluded, “Most Americans received water from systems which reported no violations of health-based standards, and for which the states reported no significant violations of monitoring and reporting requirements. ” And in the cases that the water quality was sub-par, 90% of the violations served communities less than 3,300 people.

In fact, unlike public municipalities, bottled water companies do not have to release water-testing results. Your bottled water may not be as safe as the local tap.

Second, bottled water is a monetary expense we can live without. We pay more per volume for bottled water than we do for the gas in our car. Tap water is very cheap. Charles Fishman writes in “Fast Company”, “If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian (which would cost you $1.35), you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35.” If you want to save money, drink tap.

Third, bottled water is an environmental hazard. Bottled water is contained in plastic. You need oil to produce that plastic bottle. You then need more oil to transport that bottle. Third, you need more oil to refrigerate that bottle so that you will purchase it. The need for oil means greenhouse gases (a primary cause of global warming).

Bryan Walsh reports in “Time Magazine” that “the Natural Resource Defense Council estimates that 4,000 tons of CO2 is generated each year—the equivalent of the emissions of 700 cars—by importing bottled water from Fiji, France and Italy, three of the biggest suppliers to the U.S.” You don’t need to buy a hybrid to reduce your environmental impact.

Fourth, bottled water tastes no better than tap water. We don’t need to belittle nor apologize for the taste of our tap water. Fishman writes,

The man who first brought bottled water to the United States famously failed an impromptu taste test involving his own product…. In blind taste tests, with waters at equal temperatures, presented in identical glasses, ordinary people can rarely distinguish between tap water, springwater, and luxury waters. At the height of Perrier’s popularity, Bruce Nevins (executive at Perrier) was asked on a live network radio show one morning to pick Perrier from a lineup of seven carbonated waters served in paper cups. It took him five tries.

Fifth, take a step against the image machine. Water tastes better in a bottle with the word Evian labeled on it the same way that coffee may taste better in a cup with Starbucks plastered on it. An indulgence here and there is not necessarily the issue. What I take issue with is when we buy into the image machine but use health or convenience as the excuse for our purchases or indulgences.

Sixth, don’t blame the marketers. The bottled water phenomena is not just marketing magic (though there were some pretty smart marketers that helped make this phenomena happen). Kim Jeffrey, a marketer with Perrier admits to Fishman, “A lot of people tell me, you guys have done some great marketing to get customers to pay for water. But we aren’t that smart. We had to have a hell of a lot of help from the consumer.” Jeffrey said that the marketing budget of the bottled water industry is only 15% of what the soda industry spends.

Seventh, fight the injustice. Consider this from Fishman, “Fiji Water (an American owned company) produces more than a million bottles a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water.” Ouch. Fiji Water does reinvest in the Fijian economy, and at times has provided emergency water to villages hit by various health epidemics, but I doubt that Fiji Water is a positive value to the island.

Also, one in six people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water. In other words, even our tap water is a luxury, or perhaps a miracle. Living on bottled water is poor stewardship for Americans. And right stewardship of resources is an important (if not primary) method in promotion of justice.

Eighth, don’t be duped. Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coke’s Dasani have less of an environmental impact than Fiji, but they are duping you. Those brands get their water from public water sources. In other words, they take perfectly safe water and “purify” it in a neat bottle. They sell you what you get from your own tap.

Ninth, did I say that you can save the environment? Our recycling rate for polyethylene terephthalate plastic (which is commonly used to contain the water) is only 23%. We pitched 38 billion water bottles into the landfills last year.

I am committed to never buy another bottled water in the United States. I have pulled my reusable Nalgene bottle from the cupboards, and every day, I fill it with tap water (which I admit goes through some sort of filtration system that was already installed into my sink). I agree with Fishman that drinking bottled water is not necessarily a sin, but a choice in luxury. Like all other luxuries, we need to pay attention to how we enjoy them. And we need to ask the question of whether the expense is a valuable benefit.

Will you join with me in such a covenant?

Kudos to San Francisco for preventing city employees from using public funds to purchase bottled water, to New York for its public campaign to encourage its citizens to drink tap water, and to Salt Lake City for not providing bottled water at municipal events.

(HT: Charles Fishman, “Fast Company”, July/August 2007–Online Edition)
(HT: Bryan Walsh, “Time Magazine”, August 9, 2007)

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