Earth Week: Greenwashing in the Bottled Water Industry

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Earth Day became official in the early 1970s, and now almost 200 countries celebrate Earth Day as a way to encourage sustainability, conservation, and awareness of the problems facing the environment today. As people caught onto the trend, corporations caught onto people. Today we are swamped with advertisements portraying products as eco-friendly or green, sometimes they accurately inform the consumer, most times they do not. It just so happens that these green claims come with more frequency from the corporations whose products are the least green; attempts to counteract what we should believe about their product.

Mount Rainier to Ban Bottled Water

Across the country numerous institutions have banned bottled water. Colleges, universities, and National Parks are leading the nationwide movement. Earlier this month, following a Corporate Accountability International petition, reports surfaced that Mount Rainier National Park could be one of the next National Parks to ban bottled water.

Notice the resemblance? Mount Rainier photo from Mount Rainier National Park's website.

Multiple accounts cite a March 25th press release (which I have been unable to locate) in which the park's superintendent, Randy King, writes that he is preparing Mount Rainier National Park for a bottled water ban. 

It appears that Mt. Rainier National Park will first install multiple refilling stations to establish infrastructure which will make it more convenient to opt for the tap, while cooperating with concessions to ensure reusable bottles are available at the park. 

"After refill stations and low-cost water bottles are in place, we’ll complete the analysis necessary to make a decision on the sale of bottled water in the park." Randy King says in a quote from Corporate Accountability International's Think Outside the Bottle site. 

Randy King also said, "The National Park Service is committed to being a worldwide leader in sustainability. Reducing, reusing and recycling are all steps in the right direction at Mount Rainier National Park.  We recognize 'reducing' our footprint as the most important of the 3R's."

The future doesn't look very bright for bottled water, especially at our National Parks, 14 parks have already banned the sale of bottled water. Amidst the growing opposition, the bottled water industry won't go down without a fight.

Is Recycling Bottled Water a Beautiful Thing?

Four separate Youtube screen captures from Arrowhead's video Recycling is a Beautiful Thing (see video below) 

Bottled water companies have had an uphill climb in getting a piece of the beverage industry (imagine trying to sell a product that is already available for free in your home). A main point in The Story of Bottled Water is that the industry has had to "manufacture demand". After marketing bottled water as a cleaner and more convenient product than tap water the industry had to reassure consumers that bottled water was safe for the environment; greenwashing. Arrowhead, which is a Nestle brand name used to sell bottled water to the western United States, launched the "Recycling is a Beautiful Thing" campaign in 2012 and they released a stop-motion video February 12th to "...demonstrate that recycled materials have significant second life utility" (article) and to promote their 50% recycled PET bottle.

Large companies, and even entire industries, should do everything they can to be conscience of wasteful practices, create sustainable products, and help protect the environment. In the case of the bottled water industry (Arrowhead for example); they are deceiving the public into thinking their products are truly "ReBorn" while in fact the products are harmful to the environment and the business practices are actually contradicting the message that "Recycling is a Beautiful Thing". Here's the question: is recycling a beautiful thing for bottled water? The answer is yes and no. Yes, the theory in recycling is to create completely sustainable cycles. The answer is certainly yes for PR departments; consumers want to feel like they are helping the environment. The answer is also is no, plastic recycling is definitely not sustainable, and processes regarding oil extraction and pollution from litter or incineration are not helpful to the environment.