How much water is used to make 1 liter?? 26 Liters!!!. Forget carbon footprint but talk about waterprint.

Use the tap!

If I am a “Nestle-hater” as you so quaintly put it (better a name-calling offense than doomed defense, I suppose), then I’m entirely the creation of the Nestle hyper-active legal department.

Stewardship? In Florida, Nestle aggressively lobbied to extract 1.47-million gallons per day from drought-stricken Blue Springs – while state water scientists wanted the amount set at 400,000 gallons per day to protect the spring, running at the lowest flows ever recorded.

They were ordered to cease pumping in Michigan due to damage to the watershed, and in McCloud, cheerily kept repeating the mantra that their 160,000 acre foot withdrawal wouldn’t harm anything downstream – despite never conducting a single flow monitoring study.

These are simply a handful of highlights. Stewardship? Please.

BTW Mr. Lauria – PET recycling rates have actually declined (The EPA includes compost [leaf collection] in its 30 percent nationwide recycling rate), and my assertion that Nestles uses exactly 0% recycled materials in its current packaging is apparently correct. The idea that a plastic shortage is the cause is laughable; prices for recycled plastic products have plummeted in the last few months, suggesting a lack in demand.

The industry’s logic is typically twisted; a better answer than recycling is to not plasticize something that comes out of the faucet in the first place.

This is bottled spring water’s forgotten toll – the rural communities overrun with trucks, split by divisive tactics imposed by predatory companies and their sizable legal departments – while their six-figure spokespersons

Bottom line: bottled water is neither safer nor better tasting (in blind taste tests) than municipal water.

Also, please let me be clear. My personal objection is the marketing behind “eco-bottles” not the bottled water industry. You won’t find me saying big bottled water companies should close up shop. But, I would like to see them stop buls***ting us about how their bottles are good, actually good, for the environment. Let’s just start with that single issue. I pose this single question to the industry: why not focus on a more honest consumer benefit like taste or safety (if those claims can factually be made)?

I am still surprised no one is making water stations to fill all those Nalgenes and Siggs for those on the go people Tom mentions.

Most bottles are standard sizes 250Ml, 500Ml, 1L, right?

When I lived in Istanbul (a long time ago) there was what looked like a gas station down the street from my apartment. It was actually a water station for fresh clean water. I have seen something like it a Wal-Mart for 5+ gallon water cooler jugs.

Someone – entrepreneurs listen – someone could make a water station the size of soda machine or smaller that dispenses exactly 250ML, 500ML or 1L of fresh clean water for the folks with reusable bottles. Place these as stations in coffee shops, etc., or wherever soda machines work today.

(Yes you can refill from a tap for free, but sometimes there is no tap or you are somewhere that tap water is not the best option. Whatever, let us assume the consumer wants to pay for water).

For the seller the margins are better as you no longer need to pay for packaging or the added weight of that packaging.

For the Eco and health crowd you get fresh clean water, for less than bottled and without the plastic bottle baggage.

I really think there is an idea here.

Do you know how many 10,000s of reusable/refillable promo water bottles my industry sells a year (I wish more came from recycled material but that is another story).

If it was truly not feasible we would not be selling so many of the darn things. What an incredibly silly thing to say.