Publications & Resources

Student Action: Bottled water: the industry, the marketing, the ruse

OSSTF Education Forum. By Andrea Harden and Karl Flecker -

Everyone knows that water and air are equally precious to life on earth. Despite this, access to safe, clean water is being increasingly jeopardized by pollution, privatization and competing demands. Globally, more than a billion people don’t have access to enough water. The worldwide demand for water is doubling every 20 years to the point where two–thirds of the people on this planet may be facing severe water shortages by the year 2025. Simultaneously, the bottled water market has been exploding in North America. Today close to one-fifth of the population relies exclusively on bottled water for their daily hydration. In Canada, it now outpaces the consumption of coffee, tea, apple juice and milk. Strange to consider that just ten years ago most people living in Canada took their drinking water directly from the tap!

The bottled water industry leaders, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Pepsi are becoming increasingly present in Canada, including in our schools. More often known for their carbonated colas, Coke and Pepsi have been eagerly acquiring exclusive beverage agreements in schools and campuses. Sometimes known as pouring or exclusivity contracts, these contracts give beverage companies exclusive rights to sell their products on school or district grounds thus excluding all competitors including local business or healthy alternatives. New Brunswick’s recent provincial junk food ban from schools is in part an example of growing resistance to the corporate presence in schools.

In response to concerns about healthier lifestyle choices, and seeing a drop in consumption of their colas the major beverage giants – Coke and Pepsi – are quickly switching gears and products in their vending machines in schools.

Tony Clarke’s very popular recent publication Inside the Bottle, an Exposé of the Bottled Water Industry, cautions against supporting this industry in any manner. The easy-to-read book outlines ten “bottled water myths” that clearly depict why we should be challenging the marketing of bottled water our schools and communities. The 10 myths outline three core concerns with the bottled water industry: consumer manipulation, environmental degradation, and corporate control.

Few consumers stop and think about the price they are paying for their single-serve bottle of water ranging from $1.00 to $2.00. Would it shock you to realize that the US Natural Resources Defense Council has estimated that bottled water is between 240 and 10,000 times more expensive than tap water? The price of a litre of gas is often just one-third of the retail price charged for a litre of bottled water. The water for Coca-Cola’s Dansani, and Pepsi’s Aqafina is actually drawn directly from municipal taps and the price mark-up is astonishing.

It is even more shocking that Nestlé pays little or next to nothing for the water it takes out of groundwater streams and aquifers. Consumers also need to be aware that bottled water is part a clever ruse – it is quite simply water transformed into water. As a former executive of Perrier once remarked, “It struck me…that all you had to do is take the water out of the ground and then sell it for more than the price of wine, milk or, for that matter, oil.”

Bottled water cartels such as the Canadian Bottled Water Association often suggest that tap water is inferior to their bottled “freshness.” Yet the City of Toronto tests its water quality every four hours but bottled water plants receive government inspections only once every three to six years. Several peer-reviewed scientific studies have found disturbing concentrations of toxic ingredients such as arsenic and mercury in their bottled water samplings. When Coca-Cola launched its Dasani product in the UK in March 2004, it had to withdraw nearly half a million bottles due to bromate contamination. Despite the bad rap being given to tap water by this industry, with few exceptions, it is widely regarded as a safe form of drinking water in Canada and the US.

Consumers are also misled by the sparkling advertising campaigns of the industry.
Bottled water is often depicted as coming from pristine natural environments. Yet that is often not the case. Take, for example, Nestlé’s Poland Spring and Alaska Premium Glacier brands. The label on Alaska Premium Glacier drinking water claims that it is “Pure Glacier Water from the Last Unpolluted Frontier.” In fact, however, the water used for this brand is municipal water drawn from the public water system in Juneau, Alaska, (pipe # 111241). Similarly, Nestlé’s Poland Spring brand is not spring water drawn from a pristine and protected source as its label tries to portray, but is usually water supplied by borehole wells located near their bottling plants. Nestlé also sells reprocessed distilled tap water labeled Poland Springs.

Moreover, these plastic bottles are rapidly becoming a major threat to the environment and our health. They are the fastest-growing form of municipal solid waste in the US and Canada. These containers also release highly dangerous toxic chemicals and contaminants into the air and water when they are manufactured, and again when they are burned or buried. In light of this, one would assume the industry would be making moves towards improving recycling rates. This is not so. Not only has the industry promoted the shift from glass to plastic containers, they have failed to live up to their own promises to increase use of recycled material in their containers. The fact is bottled water industry actively oppose legislation aimed at improving recycling rates for plastic bottles, and requiring beverage container deposits. More sinister still is their use of a deceptive logo on their products that misleads consumers into thinking the product can be recycled, when the opposite is often true.

We also need to question the growing corporate control of water – a basic human right. The world’s largest for-profit water service corporations have set their sights on North America: Suez and Vivendi, (now Veolia) from France and RWE-Thames from Germany are eager to deliver privatized waters services, and companies like these are targeting the home/office bottled water market. The bottled water industry’s marketing of “safe, clean water” undermines citizens’ confidence in public water systems, and paves the way for the water companies to take over local water utilities that are in desperate shape. In return, public willingness to pay premium prices for bottled water enables water service corporations to establish a top dollar price.

Establishing a price for access to beverages in schools sets the stage for the removal of public water fountains in schools. At the University of British Colombia, home of the first Canadian university exclusivity contract, maintenance staff (CUPE workers) found that 44 percent of water fountains were removed or disabled on the UBC campus in the first three years of the beverage contract. At Queen’s University in Kingston, students documented the placement of machines obstructing access to water fountains.

The corporate control of water is extending into kindergarten to grade 12 schools, universities, and colleges. Exclusive beverage contracts give these companies long-term, high profit access to students in captive environments. Resistance to the deals is challenging the secretive manner in which the contracts are negotiated and cloaked from public scrutiny. Some contracts have been forced into the public light thanks to activists, who have exposed clauses like guaranteed compensation for broken contracts and the right to include corporate logos on school property or school team uniforms. In addition schools have been obligated to sell an enormous number of corporate products over the life of the contract. If they fail to do so they can not be paid, or be obligated to extend the timeframe of the contract.

Exclusivity contracts are often signed in light of the pressing need for funds in our increasingly cash-strapped public school system. The cost of the revenues gained from these contracts needs to be debated. Darko Matovic, an engineering professor at Queen’s University, discovered that the money their university receives from their Coke contract ($500 000 per year) is sizably reduced when considering the electrical usage cost of the vending machines ($100 000 per year). Four hundred thousand dollars a year still sounds like a lot! Consider that the money comes from people putting their own coins into a vending machine, for a carbonated drink, sweetened juice or bottled of doctored tap water. After a profit is extracted from their coins, a portion is annually returned. Imagine other ways this money could be generated from a university or school initiative. What about creating a local beverage supply operation utilizing regional fruits/vegetables and local manufacturing processes that provides work for students and community people to produce and distribute healthy beverages? In the case of universities and colleges, what if different academic disciplines created such a venture, employing knowledge and learning opportunities from commerce, community health and epidemiology students, area farmers and small business people? Imagine the possibilities. Of course it’s ambitious but don't a lot of ambitious initiatives take place at universities? Solar cars, neutrino research, innovative community based healthcare, sound public policy?

We also need to question whether corporate cheques in exchange for captive student markets are worth the consumer manipulations, environmental degradation and increasing corporate control that bottled water represents. The money received from these contracts needs to be weighed against the corporate behavior of the companies profiting from the sale of their products.

Coca-Cola Co. and its bottlers in Columbia have implicated in human rights violations of paramilitary groups who have tortured, wrongful detained and murdered trade unionists at their plants. PepsiCo. fired 66 unionized workers in its bottling plant in Guatemala and replaced them with non-union sub-contracted workers with lower wages and benefits.

Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi have contributed to the depletion of water in India with devastating results for local farmers and communities. Nestlé (less present in schools, but a leader in the bottled water industry) in Columbia has repeatedly been implicated in union busting. A number of cases in recent years indicate a sustained effort by Nestlé to remove unionized workers from their Columbian operations. Are the exclusivity contracts and partnerships agreements with these companies worth the association?

As awareness regarding the corporate track records of these bottled water giants increases, resistance is erupting across Canada and the US. Student activists are questioning the exclusivity contracts and demanding that their administrations expose the deals for public debate. Some universities, such as Guelph, have succeeded in banning these contracts from student owned buildings. The Polaris Institute is contributing to this battle by arming such groups with tools to help expose bottled water myths.

There is a new brand in town and its catching on. It’s called ethics. Crack it open, try it on – the fit is for you to decide.

Andrea Harden is Polaris’ Bottled Water Campaigner, Karl Flecker is director of the water program at Polaris Institute, a socially motivated think-tank based in Ottawa.