Date: 2024-06-30 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00000279
PRODUCT
WATER ... BOTTLED WATER
What is good about bottled water? Profits.
WATER ... BOTTLED WATER
What is good about bottled water? Profits.
Original article: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/08/bottled-waters-ethnic-gap
PETER BURGESS COMMENTARY:
The only good thing about bottled water in most of the world is that it makes good profits for those that are producing, marketing and distributing the product. The cost and price is astronomical compared to a potable water supply run for public good ... but, of course, even this business model has been turned into a 'for profit' activity that aims to extract profit rather to deliver social benefit. The water sector is critical to human society ... the capitalist market economy is a business model that puts profit for investors first, when the priority should be to have sustainable society first.
UPDATE
Fast forward 10 years and it seems that some of the fears held by the Black and Latinx communities are justified. The US has failed to maintain and upgrade much of its essential infrastructure in communities around the country. The failure in Flint, Michigan was in the news for a long time, but the problem reaches into many communities. The problem is not only degraded lead pipes but also toxic pollution in many groundwater reservoirs. The problem is deep, but political leadership on the issue has been weak for a very long time.
UPDATE II
At some point in the last few years I wrote the following:
The advertising industry has done an amazing job of misinforming and confusing the public. The goal of advertising is to create unnecessary wants that are profitable while essential needs which are valuable go unsatisfied.'Bottled water' may be profitable using conventional accounting metrics, but a Triple Bottom Line assessment of the bottled water industry shows bottled water to be a huge social and environmental problem. There may be 'good' in the water, but a lot of 'bad' in the plastic!
Peter Burgess
The advertising industry has done an amazing job of misinforming and confusing the public. The goal of advertising is to create unnecessary wants that are profitable while essential needs go unsatisfied.
By Jaeah Lee ... Mother Jones
Mon Aug. 15, 2011 2:30 AM PDT
Over at Forbes, Nadia Arumugam writes that bottled water companies have been actively marketing their products to minority groups, with ads targeting black and Latino mothers, and endorsements from celebrities like TLC's Chilli and Hispanic TV host Cristina Saralegui.
Judging from a new study published by the American Medical Association, the PR push is working. Researchers from the Medical College of Wisconsin found that Latino and African Americans are more likely to give bottled water to their children, and spend up to twice as much of their household income on bottled water as do whites. After surveying some 640 people they found that Latino and African Americans are more likely to consume bottled water largely because they view tap water as a health risk. From the study:
Beliefs about tap water safety and cleanliness, preference for bottled water taste, and perceived bottled water convenience had the strongest association with the use of bottled water. Obtaining information about tap water from environmental organizations was also associated with greater odds of bottled water use.Latinos and African Americans, the survey found, spent up to 12 and 16.7 percent of their household income on bottled water, respectively, while white Americans spent up to 6 percent. The racial/ethnic gap in bottled water consumption could be explained by 'actual differences in current tap water quality,' the study notes, and survey responses supported this notion, finding that 'prior experience is related to water choices.'
America's water system faces an annual funding shortfall of at least $11 billion, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. In their 2009 Report Card for American Infrastructure, the group gave a disappointing D- for drinking water, arguing that the country's ability to prevent failure in drinking-water systems and maintain them are inadequate. Disruptions in water delivery services 'can hinder disaster response and recover efforts, expose the public to water-borne contaminants, and cause damage to roadways, structures, and other infrastructure, endangering lives and resulting in billions of dollars in losses.'
Such weaknesses might be more acute in rural and low-income communities. According to the US Census Bureau, Latino and African Americans together make up almost half of the US population living under the poverty line (PDF). The In 2004, the Natural Resources Defense Council reported that three in five African and Latino Americans live in communities that are also home to Superfund sites, which are prone to releasing toxins into nearby groundwater supplies (PDF). In a March 2011 case study of California's San Joaquin Valley, the environmental group Pacific Institute warned that the nearby communities' were likely drinking water contaminated with nitrates above EPA-sanctioned levels, likely coming from agricultural fertilizers. Those most at risk, the report found, were disproportionately low-income households and Spanish-speaking residents.
Back in 2007, three scholars from the University of Illinois argued in the journal Geoforum that such a disparity is often ignored because people tend to assume that the US provides universal access to safe drinking water. Not true, they say:
Contrary to reports of 100 percent access to safe water and sanitation in international surveys, the United States has a complex landscape of low-income water systems...The vast majority of urban and rural poor in the US do have access to water and sanitation. However, even cursory observation of poor areas in the US indicates residents who lack access to basic indoor water and plumbing. They include some among the urban homeless, migrant workers, residents of colonias along the US-Mexico border, and remote areas of Native American reservations...
You can't blame people for choosing bottled water when the tap water sucks. But unfortunately, bottled water comes with pretty serious environmental consequences. There's the obvious waste problem, to start. Somewhere around 2.4 million tons of polyethylene terephthalate plastic (commonly used for bottling drinks) is discarded in the US each year, and up to 41 percent of that comes from water bottles. Nor are bottled water companies the kind you'd want in your neighborhood. Mother Jones has reported extensively on Fiji Water's malpractices in particular, whether it's turning its cheek away from the island's oppression under the military junta, disregarding the local populace's lack of access to water, or burning its trash in nearby towns.
The underlying and perhaps most sobering threat here is that unsafe tap water, whether perceived or real, could be contributing to the financial burden on low-income communities. And if safe tap water were more widely available, maybe people wouldn't be so vulnerable to bottled water companies' marketing ploys, regardless of ethnicit