Column Drink Nestlé water, or any other bottled water for that matter? Stop. Now.

In a world where food has become political, it’s easy to forget that there’s something even more essential than food: water.

Water is after all what helps our food grow; not only do we need to drink it, but so do the plants that we consume everyday. Without water, we have nothing.

The severity of the drought in California has put the water crisis at the forefront of our minds, but it’s nothing new. Over the last century, water use has grown at more than twice the rate of population increase, and by 2025, approximately 1.8 billion people will suffer from water scarcity. Water is an issue that we must take seriously.

In the face of such an issue, it seems near insanity that companies would profit off of water. The corporate face of water privatization is of course Nestlé. As the owner of a handful of water brands, like Poland Spring, Pellegrino, Perrier and Evian, Nestlé dominates the bottled water market.

Consumers spend up to 2,000 times the price of tap water to drink out of a bottle. And when an estimated 25 percent of all bottled water is actually tap water, I think we can all agree that a bottled water habit is simply idiotic.

But in the mind of the corporations, it’s their right to make money off of water. Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck has publicly come under scolding for his comments back in 2013 in regards to water rights. “Water is of course the most important raw material we have today in the world. It’s a question of whether we should privatize the normal water supply for the population. And there are two different opinions on the matter. The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution. And the other view says water is a foodstuff like any other. And like any other foodstuff it should have a market. Personally I think it’s better to give foodstuff a market value…”

While that might sound like extreme thinking, it’s definitely in line with Nestlé’s global push to privatize water sources. In Pakistan, Nestlé has been accused of draining groundwater levels and affecting local health in order to bottle Pure Life, a bottled water brand marketed as a healthy option for families. What’s so healthy about drinking contaminated groundwater because the levels are so low? At the World Water Forum in 2000, Nestlé successfully lobbied to keep water from being declared a universal human right (Nestlé defines water as a “need”).

If you think that’s appalling, check out The Story of Stuff Project that made the fantastic video on bottled water back in 2010 and has recently launched a campaign against Nestlé and the privatization of water.

As Nestlé lays claim to 700 million gallons of water in thirsty California, the corporation’s leadership publicly holds that it is providing a benefit to people. With five bottling facilities in California, Nestlé claims to run its own operation because “people need to drink water.” But that’s a benefit that really only benefits the company, financially speaking, and for the citizens of California, means drawing from its groundwater, an act that is unfortunately goes unregulated by the government. In fact, Nestlé Waters North America’s CEO Tim Brown said in a public radio interview, “If I stop bottling water tomorrow, people would buy a different brand of bottled water. We see this everyday. In fact, if I could increase [bottling], I would.” It seems nothing, not even a debilitating drought, will make Nestlé stop.

Boycotting Nestlé is of course one option, and you might be surprised at what brands that fall under the Nestlé umbrella. Time to kick your PowerBar habit, athletes. Got a Nespresso maker? Time to ditch that as well, sorry George (although, I don’t know why you are drinking capsule coffee in the first place). Also, you should probably stop feeding your dog Purina Dog Chow.

The other option, and the simplest one which you can implement on an everyday basis, is to boycott bottled water, of all brands. All things considered, when we live in countries where access to clean, potable water is as easy as turning on the tap, there is no excuse for drinking bottled water. None.

Related on EcoSalon

The War on Public Water

Is “Sustainable” Palm Oil Actually Sustainable?

Behind the Label: The Unsweet Side of the Dark Chocolate Industry

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: SimonQ

The post Why You Should Boycott Nestlé Water and All Its Other Brands: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

What’s healthier and more vital to our existence than water? Definitely not bottled water. In fact, it’s loaded with so many chemicals it will make your head spin.

According to recent research that looked at 18 bottled water brands, there are an astonishing 24,520 chemicals in bottled water (which makes you wonder just how many chemicals there are in the world if water can contain more than 24,000).

We already know putting anything in plastic knocks its health value down a few notches, even if it’s just because of the indirect health risk from the environmental damage plastic causes, polluting our water and our food supply.

Heating plastic with food in it (like in the microwave) is an absolute no-no, as it makes the chemicals more active and capable of leaching into your food and of course, your bloodstream.

Plastics are hotbeds for endocrine disruptors, which can mimic the body’s natural metabolic functions, throwing off these delicate systems and causing health problems.

The study authors wrote: “We detected antiestrogens and antiandrogens in the majority of analyzed bottled water products. Moreover, the antagonist activity was very potent. An equivalent of 3.75 ml bottled water inhibited estrogen and androgen receptor by up to 60 and 90%, respectively… Bottled water from six different countries has been found to contain estrogenic, antiestrogenic, and antiandrogenic (this study), as well as androgenic, progestagenic, and glucocorticoid-like chemicals. This demonstrates that a popular beverage is contaminated with diverse-acting EDCs.”

And these endocrine disrupting chemicals can lead to cancer, birth defects, cardiovascular issues and developmental issues for children, reports Natural Society—all from something as important and should-be-harmless as water in a bottle.

Terrifying, yes, especially if bottled water is your only option, like if you’re traveling to another country. But there are workaround options like Life Straws and filters that can make conventional tap water a healthier option. There are also a few brands of bottled water that come in glass. Of course, if you’re in a situation where there literally is no other option, drink the water from the bottle. While there are health risks to contend with from plastic, there are far more immediate and potentially dangerous risks in not drinking any water at all.

Find Jill on Twitter and Instagram

Related on EcoSalon

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Bottled water image via Shutterstock

The post More than 24,000 Chemicals Found in Bottled Water (But Surprisingly Not on the Ingredients List) appeared first on EcoSalon.

A San Francisco official has proposed a ban on bottled water that would be one of the strictest in the nation.

When’s the last time you attended a sporting event, concert, or parade that didn’t have bottled water for sale? If San Francisco Supervisor David Chiu is successful, this could soon describe every event held on public property in his city.

Chiu recently proposed a strict ban on bottled water sales in San Francisco. The legislation would “gradually phase in a ban on the sale of bottled water of 21 fluid ounces or less on all city properties with leases signed after 2014 and at concerts, large events, parks and food trucks,” reports the Huffington Post.

Bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste each year. According to The Water Project, plastic water bottles take more than 1,000 years to bio-degrade and if incinerated, produce toxic fumes.

“Given our access to incredibly healthy clean and tasty Hetch Hetchy water, which is some of the highest quality municipal tap water in the country, it just doesn’t make sense for us to have this addiction to plastic water bottles,” Chiu told the San Francisco Examiner.

At first, the ban would apply only to sites that already have alternative water sources, such as drinking fountains, eventually extending to all events on San Francisco property. By 2016 the ban would also apply to outside vendors as well, explains The New American.

Although it would be the most aggressive, the San Francisco bottled water ban wouldn’t be America’s first. In January 2013, Concord, Mass., became the first U.S. community to outlaw single-serving plastic water bottles. Although significant, the Concord law carries only a $50 fine for stores that violate the ban (and there is an exemption for emergencies).

The proposed San Francisco ban would start October 2014 for new leases, including renewals, and permits for vendors in public parks, including mobile food trucks, reports NACS Online. By 2016, no one would have license to sell or give out water bottles at events held outdoors on public property.

As one might expect, the International Bottled Water Association is not pleased with the idea of a San Francisco bottled water ban. The IBWA claims that banning bottled water will have a negative effect on public health, stating: “Efforts to eliminate or reduce access to  bottled water will force consumers  to choose less healthy drink options that have more packaging, more additives (e.g., sugar, caffeine), and greater environmental impacts than bottled water.”

What do you think? Does the San Francisco bottled water ban infringe on consumer rights? Or is it a necessary policy in a world that’s literally swimming in plastic waste? Tell us in the comments.

Related on Ecosalon:

Banning Bottled Water, Aussie Style
The Biggest Loser Bans Bottled Water
The Demise Of Fiji…Bottled Water

Image: stevendepolo

The post Will San Francisco Become America’s First City Without Bottled Water? appeared first on EcoSalon.

We have all been schooled in the importance of water consumption. We’re told too many times to drink about 8 cups per day, but too little about the quality of water we drink and how to ensure we’re getting healthy drinking water.

So even if we are getting enough water, we might not be getting enough hydration. In some cases, we could even be harming ourselves with the water we drink. Learn why you should avoid some waters and embrace others.

What Not To Drink

The following common drinking water options lack the minerals your body needs to properly hydrate itself and may even contribute to disease:

1. Tap water is treated, processed and disinfected by the local sewage treatment center. It is purified with chlorine and treated with fluoride. Tap water has also been linked to cancer.

2. Distilled water is water that has its impurities removed by boiling water and then condensation the vapor into a clean container. However, this process rids the water of important minerals.

3. Developed more than 40 years ago, reverse osmosis involves forcing water through a semi-permeable membrane, moving from a stronger saline solution to a weaker one. The membrane blocks the passage of salt particles and some contaminants. However, this process does not remove small contaminants and removes alkaline minerals from the water, leaving it relatively acidic, which is dangerous to the body’s acid-alkaline balance.

4. Bottled water is something you should avoid, and for very good reason. It is often simply purified municipal water and is devoid of essential nutrients. The plastic containers also leach toxins into the water. If drinking bottled water, make sure it comes from a natural source and is stored in a glass container.

What To Drink

For truly healthy drinking water, stick to water from a natural source that contains inherent, essential  minerals. Well water, artesian or spring water, and mineral water are the most promising options. Well water comes from a hole dug deep in the ground that taps into a water source and then pumps it to the surface. Usually, if you don’t have access to city water, your source is from a nearby well. Natural spring water is bottled at the source while artesian and spring waters, albeit natural, are bottled off-site. Mineral water may be your best bet for healthy drinking water. It is derived from an underground source and has dissolved solids, much of which includes minerals and trace elements, such as magnesium, potassium, and sodium. If buying bottled water, make sure that it is in a glass container to prevent toxins from plastic getting into your water.

Photo Credit: rwhgould

The post Healthy Drinking Water: Get the Know on Your H2O appeared first on EcoSalon.

A new bottled water ad begs the question: Really? 

When I see that up-skirt photo, an ad for Watta Pure bottled water, I have a lot of questions. Is the girl so drunk that a kind friend shoved a bottle of water between her legs so she’ll remember to hydrate? Or maybe it’s that she’s not that drunk and knows enough to cover her junk with a bottle of water when all those paparazzi are around?

No matter how the bottle got there, or what that woman plans to do with it later, I think we can agree that this campaign from the all-male team over at Avance WWP is selling one thing — and it’s not water.

This is just a lame ad that, unfortunately, will inspire people to check out the site and see what all of the fuss is about. But, judging by the comments on the company’s Facebook page, consumers might be clicking, but they won’t be buying — a case of giving away the milk, perhaps?

While there are a few “nice ad, bro” posts in the public opinion mix, this post from Minas M. sums up the general consensus: “shyte campaign.” We couldn’t agree more.

Find out more about how bottled water is contributing to the global water crisis and women looking stupid, then go out and get a reusable bottle; where you keep it is up to you.

Photo: Watta Pure Water

The post Bad Ads: Would You Like Some Crotch With That Water? appeared first on EcoSalon.

The best of the week at EcoSalon, hand-picked for your clicking pleasure.

As sea levels rise, so does the level of human suffering. Photojournalist Gideon Mendel’s series of films and photos, Drowning World, provides a powerful glimpse of the faces behind the statistics.

Let’s play a game. I say “music festival”, and you say? A fair few of you (primarily Europeans) probably just said “rain” – as would those currently attending the Isle of Wight festival. How many rainclouds can you spot in these 30 photos of musical festivals worldwide?

We’re not shy about telling the world about our loathing of bottled water – or rather, the way that water comes in “throwaway” PET plastic bottles derived from non-renewable source – so we were delighted to hear this week that the Coca-Cola Company is taking PET in a whole new direction…

This week, it officially became offensive to name all the parts of a women in medically correct terms – in the House of Representatives, that is. In response, the rest of America says this: VAGINA.

Finally, on the cusp of midsummer, Johanna Kindvall recommends you sink your teeth into this traditional Swedish midsummer recipe. God hälsa!

The post The Friday 5: That Sinking Feeling Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

It’s up to us to say no to corporations buying up our public water and selling it back to us in plastic.

In the context of World Water Day on March 22, a report by the World Economic Forum ranked water shortage as one of the top global risks – right up there with widespread financial collapse and terrorism. And a recent U.S. intelligence report predicted that water shortages caused by population growth and climate change could spark terrorism and wars over the next 10 years.

You probably know that many people worldwide don’t have access to sufficient clean water for their daily needs, but the water wars are even in full swing in the U.S., as global corporations such as Nestle, Crystal Geyser, and Coca Cola obtain cheap water rights from strapped municipalities, bottle it, and resell it at a huge profit, turning what should be a human right into a global commodity.

These companies are not only sucking up the water in our natural springs, but, because they are meeting opposition in those efforts, they’ve turned to buying up our tap water, putting it in plastic, and selling it back to us.

Cases all over the country reveal that many of the deals are done in secret when a company buys or leases land from a private owner to access springs, and then makes deals with government officials to build a bottling plant. The company usually promises jobs in exchange for tax breaks, but, according to data provided by Food & Water Watch, the jobs are few (generally fewer than 10 for local residents) and low paying. (below the national average). Once the public gets wind of the deal, they often try to fight it.

In one high profile case in McCloud, California, a small mountain community near Mt. Shasta, Nestlé (which also owns Perrier, Poland Spring, and Arrowhead) gave up after a six-year battle with residents over a bottling plant that would tap the area’s spring water. Opponents had said the deal was done in secret without proper environmental review.

After that case, Nestlé turned to the tap, announcing plans to locate a plant in Sacramento that would bottle 82 million gallons a year of Sacramento’s municipal water supply and sell it to consumers under the company’s Pure Life brand (at a retail value of between $111 and $166 million). The Sacramento City Council and citizens were left out of the deal. Citizens formed a group to stop the plant, but it was unsuccessful and the plant opened in February 2010.

Just this week, it was announced that residents of Cascade Locks in Oregon are fighting a proposal by Nestlé to bottle water from the Columbia Gorge.

The bad publicity is starting to influence company actions. The Crystal Geyser Company recently nixed plans for a plant in Orland, California, after a citizen group sued to stop the plant from being built. To announce the cancellation, the company’s PR spin machine went passive-aggressive with a divisive, finger wagging letter aimed at opponents, essentially accusing them of depriving the good people of Orland of great jobs.

But Nestlé takes the cake for cynical PR efforts. This press release touting Nestlé work to improving watersheds across North America could have been torn from the pages of Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Freedom.

Lest you think it’s just big, bad corporations going after public water, it’s not. In Southern Oregon, one individual water speculator is looking to make a buck on the waters of the McKenzie River. In Maine the Passamaquoddy tribe is working to build a plant to manufacture water they plan to siphon from an aquifer on tribal lands.

We’ve only talked about the supply side. On the demand side, there are promising developments that could slow the trend toward privatization of water. In a move that concerned representatives from Coca Cola, The Grand Canyon banned all sales of bottled water earlier this year and several universities are considering or enacting similar bans.

Images: aweidner, jonicdao, brimelow

The post The War On Public Water appeared first on EcoSalon.

Will you survive a pandemic?

Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion opened last weekend to reviews written by the glow of a thousand hand-sanitizer chemicals. This medical thriller tells the story of a lethal pandemic sweeping the globe as the medical community fights for a cure. Meanwhile, everyone else fights for truth, justice, and the American way – if the American way means bureaucratic angling for a vaccine while pharmaceutical companies count dollar signs from bunkers 50 feet below the surface of the earth.

Soderbergh taunts us again and again with a question that feels uncomfortably realistic: what would you do in a pandemic? Would you hunker down in your shed next to a stack of Twinkies with a shot-gun trained at the door, would you live-blog the event from your dark apartment promoting FTC-compliant homeopathic cures, or would you maintain your dignity while heroically saving the world and the last Rhesus Monkey with disturbingly gentle eyes?

Contagion offers us several lessons of conscious living in the event of a global medical crisis. Lessons of truth, lessons of sacrifice, and lessons of amazing skin tone achieved through truth and sacrifice. We’ve listed them below with spoilers. Lots of spoilers.

Handsome bloggers with questionable teeth speak the truth while the government lies. (Or do they?)
When we first meet Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law), he is a “freelance journalist” storming out of the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle when they won’t cover his blog about a strange death on YouTube. (Law’s handsome looks are made blogger-real by a prosthetic snaggle-tooth.)

His character becomes a paranoid prophet to 12 million followers as he searches for the truth. But is Krumwiede really the ultimate conscious writer bound to integrity? Only his fake tooth knows the truth.

Bottled water will not save you.
Environmentalists go on and go and on about the evils of bottled water. “The plastic makes baby dolphins cry” and “The water isn’t cleaner than your tap.” All true. But as bottled water is snatched off shelves in this movie by panicked mobs, virus germs start flying about the grocery store like winged wee-beasties gunning for any visible mucus membrane.

Meanwhile, one can only assume the conscious-living folk are safely at home, sipping their tap water out of stainless-steel BPA-free containers.

Neither will hand-sanitizer.
Sure, no one listens to you when you spout about the dangers of overusing hand sanitizers. Triclosan, its main ingredient, may help create bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.

So when the pandemic hits the fan, are you going to want to be facing it with an awesomely-developed immune system or a bottle of triclosan dripping all over your hands?

The importance of luminous skin in a world-saving heroine cannot be emphasized enough.
The greatest lesson of this movie is to Stop. Touching. Your. Face. (And giving germs quick entry.) But if you must touch your face, make sure it is to apply a good moisturizer.

Several of the heroes of this film are doctors who work for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO). They are played by Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle, and Marion Cotillard, a trio of gorgeous women who could collectively stand on a beachfront and make like a super-human lighthouse to ships passing at sea.

If you are in touch with your humanity, you get to live.
See, it pays to be sensitive and conscious. At least if you are gentle-souled Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon), who shepherds his teenaged daughter through the pandemic with a superior immune system and many empathetic looks.

As the movie’s moral Everyman, Mitch holds our hand through the scary parts and totally understands when we get up to wash them afterwards.

If you aren’t in touch with humanity, you get to kill the planet – Gwyneth.
The fact that Soderbergh cast Gwyneth Paltrow, the Queen of Unconscious Blogging, as Typhoid Mary/Beth Emhoff seems almost too literal. Ultimately, it is Beth and her adulterous ways who unleash the virus upon North America.

But while Gwyneth of GOOP can laud a “gorgeously-textured [$2595] Prada satchel” and prattle about “a delightfully laborious Labor Day weekend in Venice, Italy,” does she really deserve to get her scalp peeled back for an autopsy to reveal her brain is mush?

Corporations and governments are in cahoots. (Wait, didn’t we already know this?)
In Contagion, corporations honor the Almighty Dollar Sign over human health while the government enables them to do so. Meanwhile, doctors wring their hands at the bureaucratic red-tape they must cut through while they’re just trying to get the damn job done.

But then, maybe these are just the ravings of a crazed blogger conspiracy theorist who plays with her hair while she types. Or his prosthetic snaggle tooth. The truth is out there, people.

In the end, rhesus monkeys save our asses. Again.
H1N1, Avian Flu 1, SARS are all viruses whose vaccines have arrived the backs of animals. This movie doesn’t shy away from that fact. There’s no way PETA would approve a movie that shows medical scientists carting away rhesus monkeys in bloody, plastic bags.

But it is the gentle eyes of a sad test monkey who finally compels hero Doctor Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) to plunge the test vaccine into her own thigh. And consequently, save humanity.

We salute you nevertheless, Mr. Rhesus Monkey.

The post The 8 Conscious Lessons of Contagion appeared first on EcoSalon.

If a tree falls in the forest does it still make a sound? Along those lines, if a bottled water company loses its namesake water source, will it still stick to the same exotic, yet bullshit, branding?

That’s the question we can all ask this week in light of the announcement that Fiji Water is closing its operations in, wait for it – Fiji. The company is allegedly “being singled out by the military appointed government for a massive tax increase.” Hmm, maybe Fijans are just a little smarter when it comes to understanding the nuances of the bottled water industry.

What kind of taxes are we talking about?

Fifteen cents per liter on companies extracting more than 3.5 million liters (920,000 gallons) of water a month. That’s up from the current one-third of one percent rate. Guess what? Fiji Water is the only company responsible for extracting that much liquid. Yes, that’s a hefty tax for a company to handle, and although it’s unclear exactly what that tax money would go to, it’s easy to posit that the Fijan government simply wants to make a decent profit off of what is already theirs. Private companies can only unabashedly profit off of a public resource for so long. At some point, someone says “stop.”

But politics aside, with their namesake facility shutting down, the real question is, does the name “Fiji Water” still hold or is a rebrand in order? I’m thinking “Crap Petro Product Drink That’s No Better Than What Comes Out of Your Tap” would be fitting.

Sorry for the bobo-types who were conned into believing that drinking water from the South Pacific would somehow make them healthier, smarter, and sexier. Give the Fijans their water and quit global marketing campaigns that glamorize a resource that most of us don’t need to be paying $4 plus for – a price tag that certainly isn’t internalizing the environmental and health costs that come from single-use plastics.

Image: Magpie372

The post The Demise of Fiji…Bottled Water appeared first on EcoSalon.

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1. Dating back as far back as 2006, several states have reported water shortages near water-bottling plants across the nation – including Florida, New Hampshire, Texas, and Wisconsin. Any chance the underground water situation has improved over the past four or five years? Not likely.

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2. Less than one percent of all the world’s fresh water is available for human use in the form of lakes, underground sources, and reservoirs. The rest is soaked into the soil, too deep underground to reach, or manifests itself in the icecaps of the world’s polar regions.

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3. Props to the folks that spend a long time tracking down clothes that are manufactured responsibly, but don’t forget that much of the environmental damage occurs after you’ve bought that gorgeous new dress. Between thirsty washing machines and the half-loads we throw in when we’re pressed for time, we send gallons of wash water down the drain every time we run the spin cycle. Let’s face it, none of us have time to scrub our clothes on a rock over a rain puddle, but do take a few steps to reduce the amount of water you use washing your clothes.

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4. It may seem like there’s a new cure for whatever ails you but, in the end, water really is your BFF when it comes to battling everything from puffy eyes and insomnia to hangovers and candy overload.

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5. Reports estimate the average person uses around 160 gallons of water per day. Where does it all go? Two-thirds literally gets flushed away, set aside two gallons if you leave the faucet running while you brush your teeth, and another 55 gallons for that 10-minute shower.

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6. For a mere 20 bucks, you can join Charity Water in building the infrastructure necessary for clean water in developing nations where people often have to walk miles just to dip drinking sludge from a polluted swamp.

Now that you’re filled with information about water that you didn’t have 10 minutes ago, what are you going to do with your new-found knowledge? Pay attention to the way you use water and figure out where to cut back, even if you just shorten your shower by 60 seconds, or give your plants a drink with the water you just used to wash your lettuce.

Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. This year’s topic is water.

Images: FreeWine, mandiberg, reurinkjan, Shandi-lee, Conor Lawless, jeckert gwapo, Charity Water

The post 6 Things You Didn’t Know About Water appeared first on EcoSalon.