Fact Sheets: Bottled Water

The Renew America’s Water campaign is asking Congress for legislation that would create a dedicated source of federal funding to repair and improve America’s water infrastructure. Today, America’s aging, leaking pipes are in dire need of repair and municipalities across the country lack adequate funding to do so. The Renew America’s Water Fund would finance repairs for existing systems. It would also provide incentive to improve water management by supporting new, more sustainable methods such as green infrastructure. Investing federal money in America’s water infrastructure programs will improve water quality, protect the environment, create good jobs and ensure safe, reliable water for generations to come.

Fact Sheet: Corporations have a financial incentive to hide the environmental impacts of their industries from an American public that is increasingly concerned with buying environmentally friendly products. As consumers are looking for ways to “go green,” many companies have been accused of “greenwashing” — promoting products as environmentally friendly when they actually damage the environment.

Filtering water at home is cheaper and safer than depending on bottled water. Indeed, as much as 40 percent of bottled water is purified tap water.2 Choosing a water filter can seem like a daunting process, but it does not have
to be.

Nestlé has taken water from numerous U.S. communities for cheap or nothing, bottled and sold it ‚Äî for billions of dollars in profit ‚Äî and then dumped the environmental and other costs onto society.

Companies that want to make billions of dollars selling bottled water are looking for new sources of water and new sites to build their plants — and they may be coming to your town next. Multinational corporations may promise benefits to the area, but they will probably fail to mention the reasons that many communities are fighting to keep water bottlers away from their homes. Here are six reasons why.

The $60 billion global bottled water industry has grown rapidly in recent years. To keep up with the expanding market, corporations are looking for new water sources. Once they identify good or easy targets, they come into communities, bottle their water, slap a corporate logo on it and sell it to stores across the country. The profits are great and the resource is cheap. The corporations benefit. The communities dont.

Cutting down on our attachment to using bottled water, which may actually be less safe in many cases than tap water, starts with us – by not buying bottled water unless absolutely necessary, whether at the store or restaurants or wherever. But we can also spread the word to our favorite establishments to start kicking the bottled water habit themselves. And restaurants are a perfect place to start, particularly restaurants at which you are a frequent or even regular customer.