Tapped Out Consumers Spurn Bottled Water

Tapped Out Consumers Spurn Bottled Water
Environmental And Economic Concerns Have The Thirsty Favoring The Kitchen Faucet

With a day's worth of bottled water - the recommended 64 ounces - costing hundreds to thousands of dollars a year depending on the brand, more people are opting to slurp water that comes straight from the sink.

The lousy economy may be accomplishing what environmentalists have been trying to do for years - wean people off the disposable plastic bottles of water that were sold as stylish, portable, healthier and safer than water from the tap.

Heather Kennedy, 33, an office administrator from Austin, Texas, said she used to drink a lot of bottled water but now tries to drink exclusively tap water.

"I feel that (bottled water) is a rip-off," she said in an e-mail. "It is not a better or healthier product than the water that comes out of my tap. It is absurd to pay so much extra for it."

Measured in 700-milliliter bottles of Poland Spring, a daily intake of water would cost $4.41, based on prices at a CVS drugstore in New York. Or $6.36 in 20-ounce bottles of Dasani. By half-liters of Evian, that'll be $6.76, please. Which adds up to thousands a year.

Even a 24-pack of half-liter bottles at Costco Wholesale Corp., a bargain at $6.97, would be consumed by one person in six days. That's more than $400 a year.

But water from the tap? A little more than 0.001 cent for a day's worth of water, based on averages from an American Water Works Association survey - just about 51 cents a year.

U.S. consumers spent $16.8 billion on bottled water in 2007, according to the trade publication Beverage Digest. That's up 12 percent from the year before - but it's the slowest growth rate since the early 1990s, said editor John Sicher.

Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., the biggest bottler of Coca-Cola Co.'s Dasani, recently cut its outlook for the quarter, saying the weak North American economy is hurting sales of bottled water and soda - especially the 20-ounce single serving sizes consumers had been buying at gas stations.

"They're not walking in and spending a dollar plus for a 20-ounce bottle of water," said beverage analyst William Pecoriello at Morgan Stanley. Flavored and "enhanced" waters like vitamin drinks are also eating into plain bottled water's market share.

(AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)Pecoriello said Americans' concern about the environment was also a factor, driven by campaigns against the use of oil in making and transporting the bottles, the waste they create and the notion of paying for what is essentially free.

The Tappening Project, which promotes tap water in the U.S. as clean, safe and more eco-friendly than bottled water, launched a new ad campaign in May. The company has also sold more than 200,000 reusable hard plastic and stainless steel bottles since last November.

Linda Schiffman, 56, a recent retiree from Lexington, Mass., bought two metal bottles at $14.50 each for herself and her daughter from Corporate Accountability, a consumer advocate group, after she swore off buying cases of bottled water from Costco.

"I've been doing a lot of cost-cutting since I retired," said Schiffman, a former middle-school guidance counselor. "Additionally, I started feeling like this was a big waste environmentally."

Aware of those concerns, some bottled water makers are trying to address the issue.

Nestle says all its half-liter bottles now come in an "eco-shape" that contains 30 percent less plastic than the average bottle, and it has pared back other packaging. PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have also cut down on the amount of plastic used in their bottles.

While it is difficult to track rates of tap water use, sales of faucet accessories are booming.

Brita tap water purification products made by Clorox Co. reported double-digit volume and sales growth in May and have seen three straight quarters of strong growth.

Robin Jaeger of Needham, Mass., fills her kids' reusable bottles with water from the house's faucet. But she doesn't use water straight from the tap.

"My kids have come to the conclusion that any water that's not filtered doesn't taste good," she said.

Quote
It's becoming chic to say, 'Oh no, I don't drink bottled water, I'll have tap water.'

Tony Winnicker, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Her reverse-osmosis filter system costs about $200 every 18 months for maintenance - still cheaper than buying by the bottle.

Kennedy, the tap convert from Texas, has a filter built into her refrigerator. She also recently bought a reusable aluminum bottle made by Sigg, a Swiss company which has stopped selling its $19.99 metal bottles from its Web site, saying demand has swamped its supply.

While Brita is the dominant player in water filtration, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Bill Schmitz, sales of P&G's Pur water filtration systems are also growing. Sales from the Pur line have increased almost every month since mid-2007, said Bruce Letz, its brand manager. He declined to give sales figures but said "the water filtration category is expanding very rapidly."

"There's a backlash against the plastic water bottle," Schmitz said.

Cities and businesses, big to small, have also gotten in on the action.

Marriott International Inc. distributed free refillable water bottles and coffee mugs to the 3,500 employees at its corporate offices in Bethesda, Md., and installed multiple water filters on every floor. The Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., got rid of bottled still water in the summer of 2006 and started sparkling its own water in early 2007.

"Does it make sense to bottle water in Italy, trek it to a port, ship it all the way over here, then trek it to our restaurant?" said Chez Panisse general manager Mike Kossa-Rienzi. "We were going through 25,000 bottles a year. ... Someone has to end up recycling them."

Many cities, including New York, have enacted pro-tap campaigns, and some have stopped providing disposable water bottles for government employees.

Chicago started a 5-cent tax on plastic water bottles in January. San Francisco has done away with deliveries of water jugs for office use, instead installing filters and bottle-less dispensers, and banned the purchase of single-serving bottles by city employees with municipal funds. The city has already cut its government water budget in half, to $250,000 a year, said Tony Winnicker, spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

"It's becoming chic to say, 'Oh no, I don't drink bottled water, I'll have tap water,' " he said.

H2O Researchers: Drink Tap over Bottled

H2O Researchers: Drink Tap over Bottled
New Reports Say Bottled Water Should Get Stricter Labeling


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Bottled H2O Backlash

Millions of Americans prefer bottled water over tap. But as Kelly Wallace reports, a new congressional report indicates there is little evidence as to what is actually inside those bottles.


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Bottled Water Impure Too, Study Finds
Bottled Water Debate Splashes Congress
(CBS/AP) Consumers know less about the water they pay dearly for in bottles than what they can drink almost for free from the tap because the two are regulated differently, congressional investigators and nonprofit researchers say in new reports.

Both the Government Accountability Office and the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, recommend in reports released Wednesday that bottled water be labeled with the same level of information municipal water providers must disclose.

The researchers urged Americans to make bottled water "a distant second choice" to filtered tap water because there isn't enough information about bottled water. The working group recommends purifying tap water with a commercial filter, however.

Both reports were released at a congressional subcommittee Wednesday morning.

Jane Houlihan of the Environmental Working Group says consumers drinking a bottle of Dasani water don't even know where it comes from, reports CBS Radio News' Bob Fuss.

"On this label you'll see that the product is pure and it's crisp and it has a fresh taste, but no where on this label will you find the source of that water," Houlihan said.

The GAO told the committee that the safety and consumer protection are "less stringent" for bottled water than they are for tap water, reports CBS News correspondent Kelly Wallace.

Sarah Walton never gives her young son bottled water and stopped drinking it herself before she got pregnant last year.

"I think the biggest danger is just not knowing what's in it," she said.

Dozens of other moms told CBS News via Twitter they agree.

At today's hearing, the Government Accountability Office said bottled water should be regulated as stringently as tap water.

Currently tap water must be tested in certified labs - not the case with bottled water; and tap is checked for maximum levels of DEH, a potentially dangerous chemical - not bottled, Wallace reports.

Bottled water - an industry worth about $16 billion in sales last year - has been suffering lately as colleges, communities and some governments take measures to limit or ban its consumption. As employers, they are motivated by cost savings and environmental concern because the bottles often are not recycled.

Bottled water sales were growing by double-digit percentages for years and were helping buoy the U.S. beverage industry overall. But they were flat last year, according to trade publication Beverage Digest.

Beverage Digest editor John Sicher said some consumers are turning on the tap during the recession simply because it's cheaper. Many restaurants and businesses are no longer buying bottled water - choosing to filter their own instead.

From 1997 to 2007, the amount of bottled water consumed per person in the U.S. more than doubled, from 13.4 gallons to 29.3 gallons, the GAO report said - to an average of 200 bottles for every man woman and child in this country.

The issue before a subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee was less about waste and water quality concerns and more about the mechanics of regulating bottled water.

As a food product, bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and required to show nutrition information and ingredients on its labels. Municipal water is under the control of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The two agencies have similar standards for water quality, but the FDA has less authority to enforce them, the GAO said, and the environmental agency requires much more testing.

Subcommittee chairman Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said the subcommittee was requesting information Wednesday from a dozen bottled water companies on their water sources, treatment methods and two years' results of contaminant testing. It was not immediately clear which companies were being contacted.

"Consumers may not realize that many regulations that apply to municipalities responsible for tap water do not apply to companies that produce bottled water," he said in statements opening the hearing.

The GAO noted the FDA has yet to set standards for DEHP, one of several chemicals known as phthalates that are found in many household products, while the EPA limits the presence of phthalates in tap water.

In a survey of officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the GAO found they think consumers are misinformed about bottled water.

"Many replied that consumers often believe that bottled water is safer or healthier than tap water," according to the GAO report.

The Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group said in its report that consumers do not get enough information to determine which water is best for them.

Both groups said some bottled water brands include the same information required of tap water providers on either labels or company Web sites.

The GAO called for more research but said the FDA should start by requiring that bottled water labels tell consumers where to find out more.

Community water systems must distribute annual reports about their water's source, contaminants and possible health concerns.

Consumers should know where all their water comes from, how it is treated and what is found in it, said Richard Wiles, senior vice president for policy and communications for the Environmental Working Group.

"If the municipal tap water systems can tell their customers this information, you would think that bottled water companies that charge 1,000 times more for this water could also let consumers know the same thing," he told The Associated Press.

The bottled water industry's trade group, the International Bottled Water Association, planned to testify Wednesday that the product, - subject to the same regulation as other soft drinks, teas, juices and other beverages - is safe. Additional standards apply for bottled water products labeled as "purified water" or "spring water," among other labels, because they must prove a connection to those sources, according to planned testimony from Joseph Doss, president and chief executive of the International Bottled Water Association.

Doss said consumers can learn about bottled water by contacting the company, reading its Web site and visiting sites run by state governments.

State safeguards for bottled water often exceed the federal, though they are less stringent than for tap water, the GAO wrote.

The trade group declined to comment on the reports before they are released.

Bottled Water Impure Too, Study Finds

Bottled Water Impure Too, Study Finds
Finding Of Contaminants Challenges Popular Impression That Bottled Water Is Better Than Tap


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Bottled Water Debate Splashes Congress
Tapped Out Consumers Spurn Bottled Water
(AP) Tests on leading brands of bottled water turned up a variety of contaminants often found in tap water, according to a study released Wednesday by an environmental advocacy group.

The findings challenge the popular impression - and marketing pitch - that bottled water is purer than tap water, the researchers say.

However, all the brands met federal health standards for drinking water. Two violated a California state standard, the study said.

An industry group branded the findings "alarmist." Joe Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Association, said the study is based on the faulty premise that a contaminant is a health concern "even if it does not exceed the established regulatory limit or no standard has been set."

The study's lab tests on 10 brands of bottled water detected 38 chemicals including bacteria, caffeine, the pain reliever acetaminophen, fertilizer, solvents, plastic-making chemicals and the radioactive element strontium. Though some probably came from tap water that some companies use for their bottled water, other contaminants probably leached from plastic bottles, the researchers said.

"In some cases, it appears bottled water is no less polluted than tap water and, at 1,900 times the cost, consumers should expect better," said Jane Houlihan, an environmental engineer who co-authored the study.

The two-year study was done by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, an organization founded by scientists that advocates stricter regulation. It found the contaminants in bottled water purchased in nine states and Washington, D.C.

Researchers tested one batch for each of 10 brands. Eight did not have contaminants high enough to warrant further testing. But two brands did, so more tests were done and those revealed chlorine byproducts above California's standard, the group reported. The researchers identified those two brands as Sam's Choice sold by Wal-Mart and Acadia of Giant Food supermarkets.

In the Wal-Mart and Giant Food bottled water, the highest concentration of chlorine byproducts, known as trihalomethanes, was over 35 parts per billion. California's limit is 10 parts per billion or less, and the industry's International Bottled Water Association makes 10 its voluntary guideline. The federal limit is 80.

Wal-Mart said its own studies did not turn up illegal levels of contaminants. Giant Food officials released a statement asserting that Acadia meets all regulatory standards. Acadia is sold in the mid-Atlantic states, so it isn't held to California's standard. In most places, bottled water must meet roughly the same federal standards as tap water.

The researchers also said the Wal-Mart brand was five times California's limit for one particular chlorine byproduct, bromodichloromethane. The environmental group wants Wal-Mart to label its bottles in California with a warning because the chlorine-based contaminants have been linked with cancer. It has filed a notice of intent to sue.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Shannon Frederick said the company was "puzzled" by the findings because testing by suppliers and another lab had detected no "reportable amounts" of such contaminants. She said Wal-Mart would investigate further but defended the quality of its bottled water.

The researchers recommend that people worried about water contaminants drink tap water with a carbon filter.