Bottled Water Industry Combats Anti-Green Perceptions With Pretend Journalism (VIDEO)

The bottled water industry, fighting back against accusations that they are a significant contributor to environmental degradation, has released this magical video of glorious greenwashing, redolent of the famous video news releases in which Karen Ryan pretended to a journalist while promoting the Bush White House's "No Child Left Behind" Act.

The New York Times's Sindya N. Bhanoo reports that this video, sent out by the International Bottled Water Association, is a direct response to Annie Leonard's The Story of Bottled Water (which you can read more about here). In the video, the IBWA touts the manufacturers of bottled water as "good stewards of the environment." It features blissed-out coffeehouse acoustic guitar music, bucolic scenes of nature and a pretend reporter from pretend outfit "BWM Reports" pretending to pose pretend questions in pretend journalistic settings. The unnamed interlocutor serves up softballs, and happily nods along, like the Liz Glover Of Corporate Evil.

WATCH:

But hey, here are some fun facts, from Ashley Braun, at Grist:

1. So few plastic water bottles, too often touted as "recyclable," actually are recycled, which is a nod to the dismal availability of public recycling opportunities in mainstream America, among other things (PDF). The EPA reported that 2006 rates of recycling for plastic HDPE milk & water bottles hobbled up to 31 percent. The overall national recycling rate doesn't look much better at a whopping 32 percent (2006).

2. That whole "landfilling" thing: plastics make up at least 11 percent (by weight) of municipal solid waste landfills (PDF). That's not even taking into consideration the plastics' volume and light weight.

3. A titanic 40 percent of that "pure spring water" Americans are chugging (and dropping a cool $15 billion/year on) is actually from the kitchen faucet. At least tap water is strictly and frequently tested for purity and safety, which leads to my next point.

4. The other 60 percent of bottled water is pulled from uncharted, or at least untested, waters. According to a four-year study of bottled water by the NRDC, the FDA exempts "60-70 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States from the agency's bottled water standards, because FDA says its rules do not apply to water packaged and sold within the same state." Even when not exempt, the rules are usually weaker than EPA drinking water standards for tap water.

5. Production of plastic water bottles requires three times the water the bottle will eventually hold. That's not even getting into the 17 million barrels of oil or the 2.5 million tons of CO2 resulting from plastic bottle production.

6. And finally, the bottled water industry is literally draining the Great Lakes, which hold 95 percent of the U.S.'s surface freshwater. Even a Sustainable Water Resources Agreement (PDF), signed by eight Great Lakes states' governors and two Canadian provinces' premiers, allows for the unlimited removal of Great Lakes Basin water "in any container of 5.7 gallons (20 litres) or less" (Applicable Use #9, Article 207).

I did really enjoy the music, though! And at the end of the video, these words appear on the screen: "Free Music From: Music4YourVids.co.uk." So, woo! Production value!

RELATED:
On battling (plastic) bottled-up rage [Grist]

COMING SOON:
World Water Day Webcast With Annie Leonard And Elizabeth Royte [Tune in tonight, March 23, 8pm]

PREVIOUSLY, on the HUFFINGTON POST
Annie Leonard: The Story of Bottled Water: Fear, Manufactured Demand and a $10,000 Sandwich
Johann Hari: My New Year's Resolution is to Lose my Bottle -- and Quit the Coke

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to [e-mail] -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Comments

[TC Corrigan]

08:50 PM on 03/25/2010

If you're new to the Video News Release topic, the Center for Media & Democracy's 2006 report on VNR use by television newsrooms is worth a read. It's troubling whether you come from the left or the right...

http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/findings/vnrs

more broadly...

http://books.google.com/books?id=s1GYiTi2vgAC&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=croteau+%26+hoynes+the+business+of+media+%22the+disappearing+line%22&source=bl&ots=5wfUcs8Ce-&sig=ihehjwnojeHtpF_ZnjNajfbIib4&hl=en&ei=tASsS5qlIYP68Abx1dnNDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[James Rickshaw]

04:44 PM on 03/25/2010

Huffington Post: "Pretend Journalism". Isn't this the pot calling kettle black?

[GuyRC]

05:05 PM on 03/25/2010

If you don't like HP go away. We won't miss you.

[James Rickshaw]

10:15 AM on 03/26/2010

Since you liked my last post so much, you might LOVE this one. From comments on USA Today's story. Interesting take - no?

Toby White wrote: 2h 6m ago
I like how Annie Leonard (who is funded by the EWG, FWW & CAI) accuses the bottled water companies of "scaring" people off tap when in fact, back in the day, it was these same groups in their crusade to draw attention to America's decaying municipal water systems who scared everyone off tap water. Remember that? These groups gave tap water so much bad press it virtually fueled the growth of the bottled water industry! I get what they are trying to do: Force governments into spending money on our municipal systems. And I support that. But do they really think the money and will to repair municipal systems will only happen if bottled water disappears? Hardly not.

[Byron Moore]

02:46 PM on 03/25/2010

I worked with a reporter who did a story a while back about stuff like this. Not only Are there ridiculously negative environmental impacts caused by the bottled water industry, they go around coning small town into giving them water rights for dirt cheap! Not to mention the high transportation costs associated with bottling and transporting the bottled water from the plants to consumers. A study by Pacific Institute published in February 2009, said that bottled water requires as much as two thousand times the energy to produce than tap water. Then these 1 billion bottles of water a week must be transported in ships, trains, and trucks in the U.S. alone, largely powered by non-renewable resources. They wrote a whole series on the sins of this industry: http://dcbureau.org/20090713176/Natural-Resources-News-Service/nestle-draining-america-bottle-by-bottle-nestle-builds-an-empire-at-the-expense-of-rural-communities.html

[Tom Lauria]

02:21 PM on 03/25/2010

Tom Lauria here, the VP of Communications for IBWA. The author states that "Bottled Water Matters" is a pretend outfit. Here's their two-year website: www.bottledwatermatters.com. On that website are thirteen videos on various bottled water issues, mostly involved in parody, made since last summer. Please view "Bottled Water's Environment Corporate Social Responsibilty" for a closer look at this teenager's send-up of reporters. Need more humor? Try her 'Bottled Water -- There when you need it." More in the mood for a regulatory lesson? She's matchless in "How Safe is Bottled Water?" Maybe you need a closer look at the real bottled water industry? Watch 'I am Bottled Water' which chronicles the 90% of bottled water companies who are small, usually family-run businesses. These videos are not nearly as slick or as costly to produce to Annie Leonard's stuff. We think the message is more important than the production values.



I've read every comment here

[gbloodgood]

01:19 PM on 03/25/2010

5. Production of plastic water bottles requires three times the water the bottle will eventually hold.
Wow, what a waste.

If you want purer water you can get a filter to put on your water faucet. It will filter chlorine etc... from the water before you drink it. You can take the plastic bottles you already have and fill them with water over and over again, thus saving more from ending up in the land fill.

I believe that water is part of the public commons just like air.
I want clean air to breathe and clean water to drink thank you very much.

[JimR]

12:08 PM on 03/25/2010

I wish all this passion against bottled water could instead be directed at bottled soda, which does exponentially greater harm to the environment and is also a major contributor to diabetes and obesity in children.

[JB Speed]

11:36 AM on 03/25/2010

Wow! The incorrect information about bottled water touted by Ashley Braun is astounding in its breadth and depth! She does great harm to her cause by using demonstrably wrong info. "Literally Draining the Great Lakes?! " If all Americans lined the shores of Lake Superior (much less the other lakes) with straws in hand that simply wouldn't be physically possible. Bottled water has the smallest environmental impact of any packaged beverage and you don't need a P.H.D.to figure that out.

[DocSkull]

11:59 AM on 03/25/2010

Being the least bad bottled beverage doesn't make it good, and if you can get the same thing from the faucet it makes it completely wasteful.

[Faithtoo]

01:55 PM on 03/25/2010

But isn't that the point of bottled water. You aren't getting the same thing from the faucet. Even if the source of the water is the same as your tap water there is still a difference. The filtration that occurs with bottled water does not happen with what comes into you home and the bottle ensures that the water is consistent in quality and taste.

I drink bottled water without guilt because I recycle and I understand the value of having it when I need it.

[DocSkull]

12:18 AM on 03/26/2010

"But isn't that the point of bottled water. You aren't getting the same thing from the faucet. "

In fact, most of the time you are. It's in the article.

[ErnestineBass]

12:23 PM on 03/25/2010

What a transparent shill.

Water bottling plants ARE drawing down water tables across the country.

Anyone who's interested in learning more about the GLOBAL damage this "industry" is causing should watch the documentary "Flow: For the Love of Water" (available from Netflix).

It'll make your hair stand on end!

[JennaBeanzzz]

08:35 AM on 03/25/2010

I love bottled water and it is convenient. I have a cabin next to one of the sources of Poland Spring and I can get the same water for free from my well. But when I am not there, I buy it knowing there is a good chance it came from my little town up there. I All the rest of this plastic debris and wasting water is a myth. The water ends up back in the ground. Water does not dissapear into space. It is matter. Even when I flush my jon up in Maine, the water goes through the soils back into the aquifer. The water going into treatment plants also ends up back in the ground to be withdrawn another day. If people are irresponsible in disposing (recycling) thier plastic bottles that is not the industries fault. You could say the same thing about the containers Soda, juice, milk and Tofu come in. This is targeted demonization to advance an agenda of hate against a product people are willing to buy and do.

[DocSkull]

12:08 PM on 03/25/2010

The article above refutes your claim that there isn't significant waste associated with bottled water. The water isn't that good either. Poland Spring 10-million dollars to settle claims that they weren't being honest about the source of the water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_Spring

[JimR]

12:11 PM on 03/25/2010

I like how you completely gloss over the environmental impact of other beverage containers.

[Faithtoo]

02:29 PM on 03/25/2010

So what makes the article above more accurate than JennaBean's comments or even that of the Bottle Water industry? I've seen reports that say the entire bottled water industry uses just 0.02% of total fresh water available in the U.S. annually. Sounds to me like the opportunity for waste can be spread out in far more industries than BW (like soda, beer, how about aqriculture and manufacturing).

If you are talking about the bottle then the bottled water companies have done the responsible thing in making bottles 100% recyclable. Meaning if people like you and me would just dispose of the bottles properly they could be used for creating new products. I think the land fill issue belongs to us not the BW companies.

[GuyRC]

05:07 PM on 03/25/2010

You are saying that the giant gyre of floating plastic trash out in the ocean is a myth?

[Tsalco]

02:47 AM on 03/25/2010

In the past few years I have been to very rural beaches in Central America, the Pacific Northwest, the Caribbean, and Hawaii. In every single place the beaches have plastic washed up on them. And in some cases, such as in Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica, what appeared to be colorful sand and shells were actually small bits of plastic that stretched on in a continuous band for miles.

In the Yucatan, the beaches have to be cleaned daily or they quickly become trash heaps from the plastic that washes up from hundreds of miles away in Venezuela. Puerto Rico was a trash heap lots of areas.

Non-compostable plastic packaging of all forms needs to be gotten rid of. It is a much bigger disaster than we realize, especially when we consider the health effects of leeching chemicals into our food. Plastic should be used for durable NOT disposable goods.

Just as we look back with astonishment at how the Elizabethans used toxic lead and mercury as makeup and for washing their faces, some day people will look back astounded how we used toxic plastic to store and cook food. Microwaving food in plastic containers will be seen as one of our major gaffes.

[Faithtoo]

02:33 PM on 03/25/2010

But who put the bottles there? Shouldn't your anger be directed at the behavior of humans? Are you angry at parents for using disposable diapers? How about milk cartons? At least the bottled water companies had to good sense to create packaging that is recyclable and do not contain harmful chemicals (BPA). Look it up!

[Tsalco]

04:39 PM on 03/25/2010

It truly appears that you did not actually read what was written. Did I even use the word bottle once? Did I even imply water bottle at any time?

As for angry, where did you get that? Please point out the angry words and/or tone. Is simply addressing an issue considered angry by you?

And, why is it that just because someone addresses one issue, someone such as yourself then has to point out other issues? Are you trying to make the person you are addressing look like they ignore other things just because they didn't address all other issue in one short post?

So, please if you show that you actually read the words as written, I will happily answer your questions.

[Kane]

12:45 AM on 03/25/2010

I remember a time when there were many public drinking fountains all throughout the city. Now it's harder to find a public drinking fountain than it is a public phone. Even at the malls where I believe it is a law to provide such fountains, they hide them in some obscure place.

I'm not a consumer of bottled water. But recently with the threat of the tsunami hitting the Hawaiian Islands, we bought a case of bottled water just to be prepared.

[Myshkin57]

11:51 PM on 03/24/2010

Another thing to remember is that you must uncap your bottles (of any kind) if you want them to be recycled. The caps melt at a different temperature than the bottles and so have to be removed, which they will not do at the recycling plant because of the time it would take to uncap millions of bottles. So, if you don't uncap your bottles and send them to the recycling center, they will actually wind up being worse for the environment than if you had just thrown them out, because they then have to be transported to a landfill. UNCAP YOUR BOTTLES!

[sadwitness]

12:55 AM on 03/25/2010

Or just don't use them

[sunshades]

11:29 PM on 03/24/2010

This is the type of stuff that just makes you sigh and roll your eyes. Why? Why would someone who gets perfectly drinkable water for free buy what's often that very same water?

[JimR]

12:06 PM on 03/25/2010

It's convenience. You can take your tap with you in the car, or in a backpack. Sure, you could get a refillable water bottle. But those are hard to keep clean, even though they may think they're clean. The threads of the cap, any tiny cracks that develop in the plastic, any kind of nook or cranny at all are breeding grounds for bacteria.

[DocSkull]

12:11 PM on 03/26/2010

Dish detergent is just fine for cleaning a water bottle. And you dared to call me a shill! lol

[Faithtoo]

03:17 PM on 03/25/2010

Where do you live where the water is free?

I certainly pay for use of my water and I don't get a refund when the water has tested contaminated and we have to use other sources for water.

THANK GOD for bottled water.

[sunshades]

06:03 PM on 03/25/2010

I won't get into a argument over semantics and what 'free' is but your logic is just so outrageous here. So water source number one is potentially dangerous so you turn to another water source which is either the very same water or a more loosely regulated, more loosely tested version. Oh my, sorry I didn't recognize that infallible logic before.

4. The other 60 percent of bottled water is pulled from uncharted, or at least untested, waters. According to a four-year study of bottled water by the NRDC, the FDA exempts "60-70 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States from the agency's bottled water standards, because FDA says its rules do not apply to water packaged and sold within the same state." Even when not exempt, the rules are usually weaker than EPA drinking water standards for tap water.

That dismantles whatever argument you were trying to make.

[techcafe]

11:06 PM on 03/24/2010

Canadian H2O

What's in a Glass of Water - CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/water/tapwater.html

Water Quality Facts (blog)
http://jugless.ca/blog/2008/06/tap-water-vs-bottled-water-whos-right.html

Tap vs Bottled Water - Windsor Utilities Commission
http://www.wuc.on.ca/conservation/tap_vs_bottled.cfm

in Canada, bottled water is regulated under their Food and Drugs Act:
http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/fssa/concen/specif/bottwate.shtml

Bottled Water FAQ - Health Canada
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/facts-faits/faqs_bottle_water-eau_embouteillee-eng.php

Talking Points on Fluoride - Council of Canadians
http://www.canadians.org/water/issues/Unbottle_It/fluoride.html

[Louie69]

10:59 PM on 03/24/2010

No extra charge for the BPA.

[Faithtoo]

02:42 PM on 03/25/2010

no BPA in plastic water bottles. Look it up

[Louie69]

03:25 PM on 03/25/2010

You're right--I am guilty for using the term BPA as a generic term for endocrine disrupters, which ARE found in disposable water bottles.

"The soft bottles do, though, contain other estrogenlike compounds, still unidentified, that could have the same harmful effects as BPA."

http://www.usnews.com/health/blogs/on-women/2009/3/12/plastic-water-bottles-should-you-avoid-the-disposable-kind-too

So while it is technically correct to say the disposable bottles are BPA-free, the reassurance is misleading.

While it is still early days in health research into plastic containers, enough is now known to say confidently that It is reckless to store food or beverages in any kind of plastic, esp. when there are other excellent options.

I recommend glass and stainless steel.

[johnmorgan]

10:40 PM on 03/24/2010

Yeah, give a few dollars to a group that plants trees, then claim that you're helping the environment, therefore you're off the hook for anything bad you do. This is what you call corporate propaganda.