Annie Leonard Tackles Our Bottled Water Addiction

by Tara Lohan · 2010-03-22 08:36:00 UTC
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bottled waterWorld Water Day is designed to give us pause: Currently 3.6 million people die each year because they don't have clean water to drink and every day 4,000 children younger than 5 die from preventable, water-borne diseases.

Here's another startling fact, TriplePundit reports that in the last 10 years, per-capita consumption of bottled water in the U.S. has doubled and we now drink an average of 200 bottles per person each year.

So, while millions of people across the world don't have access to clean water at all, Americans, the overwhelming majority of which, have safe and cheap tap water flowing freely, still are choosing to shell out tons of money for bottled water. And the industry is making a killing off of it.

Annie Leonard, who put together the hit internet video, "The Story of Stuff," and recently released a book by the same name, has now released a new short film, "The Story of Bottled Water." Leonard illustrates how the bottled water industry has waged a war on tap and convinced us to buy their plastic bottles, adorned with snow-capped mountains, even though the environmental and economic costs of bottled water are high.

Food and Water Watch reports that 17 million barrels of oil are needed to produce all the plastic water bottles we use in the U.S. each year — and, shockingly, 86 percent of them will never be recycled.

And what many consumers don't know is that a third of bottled water is actually from the same source as tap water. Companies like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Nestle, the big three water bottlers, are actually sucking municipal water systems for the product they bottle and sell back to us for hundreds and even thousands of times the cost. Additionally, Nestle has been mining groundwater in rural communities — many of which are concerned about their springs and streams going dry because of bottling operations. Learn more about the growing backlash against the company here.

Leonard ends her film with a call to action that is much needed. She urges us to join a campaign to take back the tap and help ensure clean and affordable drinking water for everyone. Food and Water Watch is a great place to help get involved in that effort, including the fight for clean water trust fund.

You can view Leonard's film here:

Photo credit: shrff14

Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet.org where she heads up the environment, water, and food sections. Her work has appeared on the websites of The Nation, Mother Jones, the Huffington Post and in Yes! Magazine.
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