19 Eau naturel

Don’t slake your future on it

AGENDA

* Boycott the tap

* Hydrate on the hoof

* Use oil like water

Were it not true, it would stretch the comprehension of even the most visionary planetary destroyer. The world’s most widely available resource is delivered straight into your home, but you choose to ignore it, opting instead for an inferior product imported from up to 12,000 miles away, at an infinitely higher price. Genius. Bottled water: the most glorious marketing miracle of modern civilization. Like sending coal to Newcastle, only more damaging.

A strong current

Until supermarkets start selling bags of oxygen, the story behind bottled water may never be bettered. It’s the most sublime example of capitalism ever seen, a multi-billion-pound market created where none could ever have hoped to exist. And the environment is paying the price. Thirteen billion plastic bottles were bought in Britain last year. Less than 2.7 billion of these were recycled, the rest incinerated, dropped in fields or gutters, or dumped in landfill sites where they will take half a millennium to biodegrade.

An estimated 1.5 billion barrels of oil a year are required to produce all these plastic bottles, enough to power 100,000 cars for a year. Grab that litre bottle in front of you and take a proper look. If you factor in energy costs of production, transport, refrigeration and disposal, you may as well fill the bottle a quarter full with oil. The bottled-water industry emits more than 2.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. Some may label bottled water ostentatiously useless, but for your designs its popularity is a work of art.

Thirst for destruction

A blue mountain and a flawless white cloud. Evian. Its message on a bottle. So pure, so tranquil, so splendidly healthy. A beautiful model sashays across your television carrying a bottle of water. She is walking and carrying water at the same time. Wishing that you, too, could hydrate on the move, you start buying bottled water. Immediately, you are impressed by how easy it is to carry. No more lugging along the kitchen sink whenever you fancy a drink. Word of this ingenuity has spread across the world, and bottled water has become the world’s fastest growing drinks sector, with hefty rises expected over the next five years. Sales have reached more than £2 billion a year in the UK alone. According to government figures, last year Britons drank 965 million litres. You can be confident that the environment, like the forgotten tap water, will soon be going down the drain.

So how have millions of people been convinced to pay over the odds for something they already have, quite literally, on tap? A slick campaign is essential. In the summer of 2007 the bottled-water big guns – Coca Cola, Danone (which owns Evian and Volvic) and the British Soft Drinks Association industry – decided to redouble their marketing nous with a new weapon: the Bottled Water Information Office. Its website displays a bottle of super-see-through liquid sat next to a shiny apple and a swish laptop. A mission statement reads, ‘Bottled waters offer the best choice of all for those looking to quench their thirst and rehydrate with the ultimate in healthy convenience.’ Although perfectly accurate, you must hope that in these on-the-go days no one has the time to analyse such wording or to remember that the stuff from a tap has similar qualities and is equally capable of slaking a thirst. As for convenience, if used correctly, a tap can also be used to fill a bottle.

Marketing mania

The Bottled Water Information Office reveals that bottled water conforms to the ‘very highest standards of hygiene, provenance and sustainability’. Sustainability is a tricky claim to support, and relies on the stupidity of millions, who fail to realize that tap water might be more environmentally friendly than bottles dragged halfway across the planet. Although the PR strategy of the BWIO may have taken it a little far this time, sales will undoubtedly continue to rise. The BWIO may sound benign, but their attack on the tap is commendably vicious. They recently saw fit to promote the vague findings of a report, claiming that humans had spread chemical contaminants and that ‘traces had even been found in tap water’. Soon enough they issued the warning that those who refused to acknowledge their product risked serious health problems, including ‘poorly conditioned hair and skin’. Millions, it advised, were putting their health at risk by not drinking bottled water. In the wet, relentlessly dismal summer of 2007, the industry warned that heatstroke was a risk and generously provided advice to keep us alive and drinking: ‘Keep a bottle of water with you at all times. Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink water – thirst is a sign that you are already dehydrated.’ Finally, for good measure, they added that road rage was linked to not drinking sufficient fluids. With the world sufficiently informed of its merits, sales of bottled water are certain to sustain themselves and, at this juncture, there is no reason for you to meddle with the clever marketing strategies that continue to hoodwink millions. Among them are the denizens of the House of Commons, who have vowed to keep using bottled water on their premises because of its ‘costeffectiveness’. MPs and staff quaff 250,000 bespoke bottles bearing the portcullis gates of power, each costing £1 a litre, and which they rarely indulge to finish. When asked if consumption of bottled water was setting the right example to the public, one MP for the House of Commons Commission, which investigates issues inside parliament, fittingly explained that using taps was just not viable. Perhaps if they want to set an inspiring example, they should consider switching brands. Word is that Waiwera, a delightful tipple undeniably worth the 12,000-mile journey from its New Zealand spring (while Evian is ferried a relatively puny 460 miles), is the next big name on the bottled-water scene. There is no excuse not to buy Waiwera. In a blind taste test of twenty-four different waters, senior sommeliers judged it to possess a smashing taste and, at £9 a litre from Claridges in London, not unreasonable value, especially when you factor in journey length, commensurate transport costs and carbon-dioxide emissions. It is hard to believe the BWIO has yet to put its marketing muscle behind this brand. In the same taste test, tap water, annoyingly, came third. Fortunately, it lacks the sophistication and hype to compete with its ecologically destructive bottled rivals.

Bottle it

If all that doesn’t quench your thirst for environmental destruction, another option is to create your own bottled-water brand. Buy some land above an aquifer and apply to the Environment Agency for a licence to tap it. Build an inefficient factory to bottle the stuff, add some trace elements that won’t make a jot of difference to human health, and then flog it, preferably to somewhere like Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia. Plaster the bottle with an image of an upland valley wreathed in glittering frost, call it Vivacity and you’re off. Even better, just take liquid from the pipes beneath Kent, throw in a sprinkling of cancer-causing chemicals, give it an odd name and stick a £7 million marketing campaign behind it in the assumption that millions will relish its convenience.

That’s what Coca Cola did. The company took Thames Water from the tap in their Sidcup factory, Kent. Then they put it through a ‘highly sophisticated purification process’ based on NASA spacecraft technology but uncannily similar to that used in home water-purification units. They added calcium chloride for an ‘elegant taste profile’ and pumped ozone through it, a masterstroke that changed the harmless compound bromide into the cancer-causing chemical bromate. Satisfied with its product, Coca Cola decided a mark-up from 0.03 to 95 pence per half-litre was reasonable. They called it Dasani and had the nerve to describe it as ‘pure’. Swish-looking bottles of Dasani, containing up to twice the legal limit for bromate, were distributed to shops. Within months the product was withdrawn. Since then, Coca Cola seems to have changed tack, even warning that it will attempt to recover and recycle billions of the plastic bottles it uses. If successful, a global boycott of Coca Cola products might need to be considered.

Elsewhere, a vast proportion of bottles are still made from a plastic called polyethylene terphthalate, which contains traces of toxins called antimony. This plastic is used because its bright, transparent sheen complements the virtuous contents inside. The toxins leach from bottles into the water in the same way that water absorbs flavour from a teabag, but safety scares have yet to deter the public. So has the fact that 99.96 per cent of UK tap water meets stringent standards and that the 0.04 per cent that fails is still safe to drink.

Climate change will ensure that bottled water remains the fastest growing sector in the global drinks market. Investors could do a lot worse than target a sector which is set to expand in a hotter world. The stifling European summer of 2003, which killed more than 20,000, may well become the norm and the BWIO’s well-meaning health messages will only become more pertinent, its lobbyists ready to capitalize whenever anyone dies of heatstroke.

Almost two billion people on earth have no access to clean water or sanitation. Some argue that the UN’s goal, to halve the number of people without access to clean water by 2015, could be achieved with less than a third of the annual amount spent on bottled water. They are missing the point. In a world obsessed with image, bottled water will become the ultimate lifestyle accessory. It makes no sense and is dreadful for the planet, but when it boils down to the battle between the individual and the environment, there will only ever be one winner.

WHAT’S THE DAMAGE?

* Bottled water becomes the new pariah. Widespread boycott leads to sales of reusable cylinders marked, ‘I’m not a plastic bottle’. Possible.

* Heatwave grips Europe in 2011, with 22,000 victims recorded in July alone. Bottled-water sales treble. Plausible.

* A series of safety scares involving bottled water fail to dent sales. Predicted.

* Current stipulation that a fifth of plastic bottles should be recycled expires. More stringent regulations are not forthcoming, due to ‘practicalities’. Probable.

* Bottled Water Information Office reveals that its product makes men better lovers. Likely.

Likelihood of bottled-water sales doubling by 2015:77%