BOTTLEMANIA
Elizabeth Royte
Bloomsbury, £18.99THE boom in designer water has brought us not only hundreds of varieties from every place from Serbia to Brazil to South Africa, but also the advent of water sommeliers, water b
ars and website guides to fine waters from around the world.
There are waters from springs, wells, glaciers and icebergs, as well as Tasmanian rainwater and melted Italian snow water. There are waters enhanced with minerals, vitamins and proteins, and even waters that have been vibrated at frequencies meant to stimulate health and spiritual wellbeing. For the conspicuous consumer there is $40-a-bottle Bling H2O, which comes in containers decorated with Swarovski crystals; and for the guilty consumer there is Ethos Water, which helps support water projects in poor countries.
In her fascinating if not terribly comprehensive new book, Bottlemania, Elizabeth Royte looks at the water wars: between bottled water and tap water, between big corporations and local water interests, between consumers who say they want the convenience, cleanliness and even status of bottled water, and environmentalists who condemn bottled water as "the moral equivalent of driving a Hummer", producing tons of plastic bottles, racking up huge transportation fees and leaving behind a significant carbon footprint.
Her book does not profile a full array of bottled waters, nor does it delve in detail into water battles around the world. Instead Royte uses the story of a face-off between the small town of Fryeburg, Maine, and the giant Swiss food conglomerate Nestlé – which, as the owner of Poland Spring water, sucked more than 168 million gallons of water out of Fryeburg in 2005 alone – as a prism through which to look at the many issues at stake in these water wars: "Is it right to trade water at all, to move it from its home watershed to other states, or even countries? Should the taxpayers who protect land and water share the profits of those who pump and sell that resource? How is water different from such resources as oil, trees or lobsters?"
Given a growing awareness of these circumstances, a reaction against bottled water has bubbled up. Environmentalists argue that it takes 17 million barrels of oil a year to make water bottles for the American market – enough oil to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year. And other critics point to alarming studies showing that bottled water isn't as pure as its marketers suggest.
Royte starts out as a firm believer in tap water. She says she carried around a refillable Nalgene bottle, which was about a decade old and had never been sterilised. But the more she investigates public water supplies, the more her doubts metastasise. While New York City's tap water is regularly hailed as some of the best water in the world, Royte reports that the city controls less than 50% of its watershed, and "roughly 100 wastewater treatment plants dump their effluent into streams that lead to reservoirs".
Of course, water is filtered and treated, for example, with chlorine, ozone and ultraviolet radiation, before it makes its way to people's taps, but hazards still remain. Royte writes that "a particularly virulent strain of E coli, called 0157:H7, can survive the most stringent wastewater treatment process and then evade standard tests".
"Today, more than a billion people lack sufficient access to safe water," Royte writes. "The United Nations projects that by 2025, increases in population and pollution, combined with drought and the reduced recharge (deep drainage] of groundwater, will leave two out of three people in similarly dire straits. Those two out of three won't just be thirsty: already, some 5.1 million people a year die from waterborne diseases, many of which stem from lack of sanitation and its resulting water pollution. That number is going to spike."
Already, she warns, "parts of Australia and the Middle East are running out of water; Mexico City is sinking as overpumping depletes its aquifer; 80% of surface waters in China and 75% in India are polluted beyond use". It's something to remember the next time you're at a water bar or online at a water site, trying to decide whether to order some Bling H2O ("a product with an exquisite face to match the exquisite taste") or a case of King Island Cloud Juice ("untainted rainwater" from Tasmania). v
