For nearly 20 years bottled water has been the category that can do no wrong - it's natural, healthy, pure and stylish. What's not to like? Which is maybe way it's interesting to spot, if not the imminent collapse of the whole gloriously shiny edifice, than at least some cracks in its polished exterior.
I first noticed this a month or so ago when preparing one of my FutureScoping trends newsletter. On digging around for content, I came across a new development in some of California's swankiest restaurants - the rejection of bottled water in favour of tap water filtered on the premiss.
The reason for this?
The hidden and currently very uncool downside of the bottled water industry (because that's what it is - a big, old industrial process): the negative impact it has on the environment. Have you ever stopped to think how this pure and natural liquid gets out of the ground and into a bottle (or where those bottles come from - worried about declining oil stocks: start thinking about how plastic gets made); what about how the water got its bubbles (it's not always natural); or how the bottles got to your supermarket or restaurant; and what about what happens to those bottles afterwards - apart from the littering issues, plastics are carbon based…so when they (slowly) decompose that carbon still has to go somewhere; and even recycling, good as it is, has a downside in terms of transportation, cleaning etc.
Now think again about how pure, natural and healthy bottled water is...even if it does give you a nice, clear complexion! Particularly when the countries which so assiduously worship at the alter of the bottle have free drinking water on tap that is usual of comparable quality any way. Or the irony that 1 in 6 people (most of them in the third world...and unable to afford fancy bottles) have no safe drinking water in the first place.
And then I came across this article in Fastcompany (with thanks to Karl) making similar points.
Some things to consider: every week, it takes the equivalent of nearly 40,000 18-wheelers to transport bottled water round the US alone. Or what about the fact that a resident of San Fransisco, armed with an empty Evian bottle, could drink water from their tap, sourced from a natural spring under the Yosemite National Park, for more than 10 years before raking up the cost of a second dose of Evian.
The focus of the article is the current poster child of premium bottled eater - Fiji Water. This is a brand many have fallen in love with, mainly because of its provenance claims - an artesian aquifer, on the edge of a primitive rain-forest, in a virgin eco system far (very far) from the pollutants of 'civilisation': more pure and natural you could not hope to find.
But then consider how the following points, pulled by Karl out of the Fastcompany article, tarnishes the Fiji halo...
- The Fiji water bottling plant churns out 1 million+ bottles per day, but Fiji is so remote the bottles are actually manufactured elsewhere and then shipped in, before they are then shipped half way around the world to the US and Europe.
- The Fiji bottling plant runs 24 hours a day and because the Fiji electrical grid can’t supply it, so they have 3 big diesel generators to run the plant, all located in one of the worlds last pristine eco systems.
- Half of Fiji’s population doesn’t have clean water to drink .
Now there are obviously many counterarguments that can be offered up in defence of Fiji Water (and the water industry in general).
There's the employment and infrastructure improvements the company has brought to the island, for instance. But do these really offset the potential environmental downsides...and the fact that most Fijians are still unable to drink their own clean water.
Or there's the substitution argument - that a bottle of water is less damaging to personal health and the environment than a can of fizzy pop. But though true at one level (pop goes through for more stages of production, and involves for more ingredients that need sourcing and transporting), this doesn't necessarily wash (ho ho) when perfectly good drinking water is available for free from your tap.
One thing interrogating water in this way did make me think of was the recent Desani debacle in the UK. Because, in many ways, here is a proposition that was nearly so right, but which Coke got so very, very wrong. With some foresight, you might have seen filtered tap water as a positive to highlight. Coke looked to hide it though. And then, when the press found out, it was seen as a 'bad thing'; a con. Honesty up front may have off set this - some would still have rejected the brand out of hand. Others, though, would have embraced the water miles argument.
But even with the likes of Desani and Pepsi's Aquafina, there's a hidden downside, which undermines the positive story they might tell. And it stems from this marketing conundrum: if 'free' tap water is as pure and drinkable as bottled water any way, how do you justify paying for it (twice in effect) when you put that tap water in a bottle? Well, you can't. Which is why the UK press had such a field day. Coke and Pepsi's way round this? They introduce another layer in the manufacturing process to 'justify' the price premium. They employ the same filtration system used to turn sea water into drinking water, to turn pure drinkable tap water into pure drinkable bottled water. Go figure!
I guess it means they can claim it's REALLY pure. But I don't know whether this is better or worse than saying it came straight from the tap. There's the added environmental impact of the processing. Plus, rather than paying for something I've already paid for, I'm now paying for something I've already paid for, that has been processed in a way it didn't need to be...making it even more expensive.
I have to admit, I don't normally think about bottled water this deeply - I'm very much a tap water man myself. And I'm sure there are bottled water advocates out there who could mount an equally compelling defence - I've no axe to grind really, and would be happy to think differently.
But maybe we are begining to see a sea change. In the past, we bought into the image of bottled water (it made us feel good), and the reassurance of provenance that came with it (because we didn't necessarily trust what came out of the tap - with good reason? I don't know). I guess the question being asked, in these more environmentally enlightened times, is whether this is a luxury we can afford, be that individually or corporately.
It does also suggest that the water utilities should be getting their collective fingers out, because there must be a potent consumer and CSR message here for them to exploit.
Anyway, I'm off to have a drink. Of coffee!
UPDATE
From today's Evening Standard: news of a Green Party campaign to get Londoners to ditch the bottled water. I'm clearly ahead of the curve on this one ;-)
