Student Action

Canada: Water worries: The bottled stuff’s not so healthy or good for the environment

The North Bay Nugget. By Gord Young -

Hundreds of local high school students were urged Thursday to close the taps on the bottled water industry.

In an eye-opening presentation to Widdifield Secondary School students, teachers Erin and Mark Robertson shed some light on a hard-to-swallow industry, revealing the water they purchase at the corner store or in the cafeteria may not be as healthy, environmentally friendly or socially responsible as they may think.

“It’s shocking,” said Katie Rose, a Grade 9 student who was one of about 900 to hear the presentation.

She said she was astonished by what she heard goes on behind the industry’s active and healthy living marketing efforts.

The Robertsons, who developed a curriculum package focusing on global water resource issues following a visit to Bolivia two years ago, told students that bottled water, which is more expensive than gasoline, often comes directly from the tap and is tested far less frequently at bottling plants than at municipal treatment facilities.

The students also heard it requires three to five times as much water to put a one-litre container on the shelf due to the bottling process.

In addition to concerns about the leaching of chemicals used to make the plastic bottles, the students were also told some testing has found traces of arsenic and mercury in some water found on store shelves.

“One in five people in Canada say they drink only bottled water,” said Mark Robertson, who urged students to stop buying bottled water and to spread the word about the industry.

He said students can also lobby their administrators and trustees to ban the sale of bottled water in their schools, much the same as the public board has done in the Waterloo Region starting next year.

The Robertsons, who are both local high school teachers, travelled to Bolivia as representatives of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation to examine that country’s battle to protect their water rights from privatization and to develop classroom resources focusing on the world water crisis.

Their presentation at Widdifield Thursday also looked at global water supply issues and water conservation.

“There are 1.1 billion people in the world who have no access to clean drinking water,” said Erin Robertson, noting 80 per cent of sick people around the globe are ill because of contaminated water.

Tilly Wolfram, a Grade 12 student, said she wasn’t aware of the statistics.

“I thought it was really eye-opening,” said Wolfram, noting she found it upsetting to hear Canada joined the U.S. in refusing to support the United Nations Human Rights Council in recognizing water as a basic right.

gyoung@nugget.ca