An international design contest could determine the Swiss brand’s next big bottle.

Plastique water is lame, so outmoded that the city of Concord, Massachusetts is seeking a ban on selling it, the Grand Canyon already has and, thus far, dozens of colleges and universities across the nation are restricting the purchase and use of it as well.

That’s bad news for Coke and Pepsi, the manufacturers behind Dasani and Aquafina respectively. Good news for companies like Nalgene and CamelBak – and even better for SIGG, the century old Swiss company that has turned the reusable water bottle into a fashionable and eco-forward accessory due to its reliance on “of-the-moment” design.

Equally au courant, SIGG has moved into crowd-sourcing to determine the next graphical incantation for its brand of aluminum canisters.

The company is collaborating with Talenthouse on an international design competition, which is now open to social voting via Facebook and Twitter. Over 2,000 designs have been entered from all over the world, including Brazil, Egypt and Nepal – appropriate given that so many of our recycled bottles are shipped globally for “downcycling” or straight-up dumping.

Here’s the skinny on the plastic water bottle industry: the water used in plastic water bottles is less regulated than regular tap water; a lot of it is tap water anyway (e.g., Aquafina); the oil that goes into producing the bottles themselves is as vapid as the consumption required to fuel a Suburban; 80 percent of the bottles end up in a landfill or toxin-pumping incinerator.

So knowing what we know, swigging from a bottle of Fiji doesn’t look so Smart, even with Aniston’s endorsement and the added electrolytes.

You’ll look sexier with a SIGG anyhow, and now it’s democratic.

Voting for the SIGG design competition is on now through April 9^th, winners will be announced in time for Earth Day.

The post What’s on Your SIGG? A Design Competition Leaves It Up to You appeared first on EcoSalon.

The bottled water industry has branded itself by importing water from pristine streams and mountain springs in some of the world’s most exotic places: Fiji, Tahiti, the Swiss Alps. Now you can go ahead and add North Korea’s Demilitarized zone to that list.

If you weren’t seduced by bottled water companies touting the natural, spiritual and physical benefits of wherever their H2O comes from, now you can down a beverage originating in one of the most guarded and protected areas on earth.

DMZ 2km is South Korea’s newest brand of bottled water, selling water from a spring that runs under the Demilitarized Zone, the 4 kilometer-wide buffer zone South and North Korea. What benefits does DMZ 2km water have over the competition? Apparently it’s all about branding, or as some might call it, greenwashing.

“We decided on water from the DMZ because it’s different and the environment there is untouched, so many people think it’s clean,” says Lee Sang-hyo, a spokesman for the company, quoted in the Guardian.

Even if people think the source water is cleaner, you have to wonder what DMZ water will do that others don’t. Make you more skilled as an international negotiator? Make you sleeker and stronger so you look better in an army outfit?

No matter its purported incredible qualities, DMZ 2km is just another brand of bottled water contributing to the industry’s overall impact. Seduced by water from far-off springs and streams, and the convenience of bottled beverages, consumers easily forget about the real effects of bottled water and the industry behind it.

In 2007, the U.S. bottled water industry alone accounted for $11.5 billion. On a global scale, in 2008, over 53 billion gallons of bottled water were consumed. These are not small numbers. Marketing another hip brand of bottled H2O promotes consumption and further waste, so stick to drinking tap water in a reusable bottle.

Photo credit: Guardian

The post Bottled Water Mania: South Korea Sells H2O from Demilitarized Zone appeared first on EcoSalon.