Who’s Behind the Bottled Water
Backlash in Britain? Don’t be Fooled by Strange
Bedfellows
July 18, 2008 - The United Kingdom
has been a central battleground in the bottled water backlash over the past
twelve months. We regularly hear news stories in the British press of new
anti-bottled water campaigns popping up with catch phrases like Turn on To Tap
Water, Tap Into Water and London on Tap.
One would think that there is a
strong grassroots movement in England actively confronting the
bottled water industry. While this may be true to a certain extent, the reality
is that the majority of the anti-bottled water campaigns in place in the
UK are initiatives of for profit
private water services companies.
An important grassroots effort of
note was undertaken by British food and agriculture advocates called
“Sustain” which has published two important
reports on bottled water use in the UK. Their 2006 report - Have you
bottled it? - which examined a number of issues related to bottled water, was
coupled with a short report that disclosed the amount of UK government funds
spent on bottled water. Sustain’s report generated a large amount of press about
the issue and helped put pressure on all levels of government in the country to
disclose the amount of public monies used for the purchase of bottled water. The
2006 report was followed up in 2008 with an updated version called
The taps are
turning.
On the heels of Sustain’s 2006
report many companies in the UK private water services industry
launched anti-bottled water and pro-tap water campaigns. By embarking on pro-tap
water campaigns the private water industry is treading in some contradictory
territory. On the one hand these companies, as do publicly owned and run water
utilities in North America (95% of the water utilities in Canada are publicly run, 85% in the US),
see the bottled water industry as a competitor. In places like
Canada public water providers and
water utility workers see the bottled water industry working to undermine the
public’s confidence in tap water. By weaning people off of public tap water in
order to consume more and more bottled water, the ground is laid for greater
public acceptance of the privatization of water services.
In the UK however, where the public
water delivery and treatment system was completely sold off to corporations
under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1989, the relationship with
the bottled water industry is different (for a detailed briefing on UK water
privatization visit Public Services
International Research Unit). Private water delivery companies
see bottled water as a direct competitor for their product, tap water. By
launching high profile pro-tap water and anti-bottled water campaigns, often in
collaboration with popular daily newspapers, these initiatives can be seen as
nothing more than a renewed form of market advertising for their products.
It is not surprising, then, that the
pro tap water movement in the UK has achieved such prominence. With
the PR teams from several private water companies working on the issue, and the
use of the print media for promotion, it is bound to achieve some prominence.
In the past 6 months, almost every
private water services company in the UK has mounted its own PR campaign
promoting tap water. Thames Water (formerly owned by German services giant
RWE), the private company in charge of
all of London’s water and sewerage services, is involved with two high profile
campaigns promoting tap water, ‘London on
Tap’ and ‘Water on
Tap’ with London newspaper The Evening
Standard. Both campaigns are designed to promote London’s drinking water through restaurants and
hotels. These two campaigns alone have generated a huge media response in the
UK and have actually been credited
with causing a drop in the sale of bottled water.
The UK
private water services industry has been using similar tactics to confront the
bottled water industry for years. As far back as 2000, Thames Water was claiming
in the media to have better tasting water than bottled water. In 2001, another
private water company, Yorkshire Water organized a ‘Tap-v-Cap” challenge that
showed 76% of the people who participated could not tell the difference between
bottled and tap water. In 2004 Yorkshire Water actually trademarked ‘their’
water under the brand Icytonic.
While these campaigns have been
successful at raising critical concerns about the consumption of bottled water
and helped to foster popular action, there is a fundamental contradiction when
these initiatives have their root in private for-profit water services
corporations.
In many respects these campaigns are
simply market advertising for the product being sold by the private water
company, namely, tap water, couched in the discourse of environmental activism.
Hitching onto the bottled water backlash is an easy way for these companies to
rebrand themselves as providers of safe water and champions of the environment.
In many cases, however, the opposite
is true when these companies are consistently fined for environmental and
financial abuses. As recently as June, 2008, Severn Trent, which serves 3.7
million customers in the Midlands and mid Wales, was fined the equivalent of $70 million
for delivering poor service to its customers and for deliberately providing
false information to UK water and sewerage industry
regulators Ofwat. In April of this year, Thames Water, the UK’s
largest private water company, was also fined $18.9 million for similar abuses.
These are only two in a long list of
reprimands directed at the UK private water industry since
privatization. Take, for instance, the recent boil water advisory for 250,000
Anglian Water customers in central England. With these problems in mind,
it is no surprise that these companies will jump at any chance to paint
themselves in a greener light.
For anti-bottled water activists in
North America, where across the board water
privatization has not occurred, British water services corporations and
anti-bottled water campaigns seem like strange bedfellows. Given that the
climate for privatization is not yet favourable, North American water services
corporations focus much of their public relations initiatives lobbying
legislators and searching for new markets. For the private water services
industry in North America, it is not much of a
stretch to believe that they welcome increased consumption of bottled water
given its role in setting the stage for the privatization of water
services.
Private water services companies in
North America know that people who are
convinced to buy bottled water as their main source of drinking water are likely
to lose confidence in their publicly delivered water. These companies are
comfortable with the bottled water industry fomenting and then capitalizing on
the public’s fears of public water utilities while simultaneously cultivating
consumers’ willingness to pay large amounts of money for a litre of water. In
this way the bottled water industry helps grease the wheels for the acceptance
of privatized water services.
The advocates of water service
corporations can point to an increased willingness to pay for clean and safe
water. This willingness to pay is demonstrated by the high consumption of
bottled water. If people are prepared to pay for bottled water because they have
been convinced it is safe and healthy, they will also be willing to pay for
privatized water services.
Because the privatization of the
UK’s water utilities took place
before bottled water had become ubiquitous, British water service corporations
can concern themselves with competing against the bottled water industry for
what amounts to the same consumer market for their products. They are also using
the opportunity to clean their questionable environmental records.
The next time we hear of a new tap
water campaign coming out of the UK, let’s cheer for the profile the issue is
getting, but we need to be wary that such a campaign is driven by a for profit
water services company whose aim is to promote its brand of privatized water.
Recent bottled water related
articles
[UK] Official: London Tap Water Is The Best In
Britain
July 17, 2008, The Evening Standard
– London’s tap water has been rated the best in
Britain by
scientists.
[US] On the
Side: Bottled water's new wave
July 17, 2008, The Philadelphia
Inquirer - For a moment, just a year, maybe two ago, it seemed that a tipping
point had been reached: Bottled water wasn't cool anymore; it was uncool. The
plastic bottles had taken on the aspect of handheld SUVs - oil hogs to
manufacture, to haul (from Fiji, for Pete's sake!), to get rid
of.
[Japan] Real cost of bottled
water
July 13, 2008, The Japan Times -
Since the Group of Eight talks produced some agreement on the environment,
Japanese can at least take time to reconsider their lifestyles. Recently, one of
the hottest environmental issues abroad is bottled water.
July 12, 2008, CTVBC - At the Burnaby
Costco store, one of the biggest sellers is bottled water.
[US] Lifecycle Analysis of Tap Water vs Bottled
Water
July 11, 2008,
Treehugger
[Canada]
Eliminating disposable water
bottles
July 10, 2008, Montreal Gazette -
More than 300 families in Beaconsfield have taken the pledge to stop
using disposable water bottles after the city launched a campaign asking
residents to give up buying single-use plastic water bottles for a
year.
[US] Nestlé water plant? Not in our town, Enumclaw
says
July 10, 2008, The Seattle Times -
Last spring, in the small town of Enumclaw, a company came calling. What it
wanted was water. One hundred million gallons a year, to be
precise.
[UK] Bottled water is just a useless
fad
July 10, 2008, The Sun - Here's how
much fluid your body really needs…
[Fiji] Water industry ready for new excise
duty
July 10, 2008, Fiji Times - The
water bottling industry will pay a new excise duty once matters are sorted with
the interim Government, says spokesman Jay Dayal.
July 8, 2008, The Associated Press -
With a day's worth of bottled water — the recommended 64 ounces — costing
hundreds to thousands of dollars a year depending on the brand, more people are
opting to slurp water that comes straight from the
sink.
[US] Putting a cap on the bottled water
industry
July 7, 2008, The Boston Globe -
Over a half-billion dollars of Massachusetts' taxpayer money will be spent this
year on clean drinking water program loans to communities, yet Beacon Hill has
been strangely silent about - and invested not one penny in defense of - small-
and often low-income rural towns that stand alone against what many see as a
threat to their drinking water supplies: Swiss-based Nestle
Waters.
[US] Coca-Cola agrees to $137.5 mln settlement in
case
July 7, 2008, Reuters News -
Coca-Cola Co agreed to pay $137.5 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit that
claimed the world's largest soft drink maker artificially inflated sales to
boost its stock price, according to court documents.
[Canada]
Bottled water tops green
blacklist
July 6, 2008, Edmonton Journal - Want an easy way to go green? Can the
bottled water.
[Fiji] Ports loses out in bottled water
crisis
July 6, 2008, Fiji Times - The Fiji
Ports Authority will lose out on thousands of dollars in income with the
decision by water bottling companies to stop production. The industry stand is a
result of Cabinet's decision to implement a new tax structure on bottled
water.
[Fiji] Firms stop work over export
duty
July 5, 2008, Fiji Times - About 720
workers will be affected after the bottled water industry ceased production
because of a new tax structure. The industry yesterday said it had stopped all
production.
[US] USA Springs files Ch.
11
July 2, 2008,
TheDeal.com - Nottingham, N.H.-based USA Springs Inc. has just become one
more company to slip into Chapter 11 in an attempt to stave off a foreclosure
sale.
[Fiji] Firm queries State
decision
July 4, 2008, Fiji Times - Cabinets
decision to impose 20 cents per litre export duty on all mineral water exports
and 20 cents per litre excise duty on mineral water sold for domestic
consumption is not good news to bottled water
companies.
[UK] CITY WANTS TO WEAN ITSELF FROM BOTTLED WATER,
BUT ...
June 28, 2008, Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette - Mayor Luke Ravenstahl would love to reduce the city's reliance on
bottled water, but as long as the plumbing in the City-County Building remains
in its current condition, city employees will quench their thirsts at the water
cooler.
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