Report: Bay State Ranks 6th in Bottled Water Consumption

For Immediate Release:
July 27, 2010

Contacts:
Christina Rossi, Corporate Accountability International, 617-447-2540
Leann Brown, Environmental Working Group, 202-939-9146

Findings released during peak sales month, suggest state stop spending taxpayer dollars on bottled water

BOSTON, MA – A report released today by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Corporate Accountability International has found that Massachusetts residents drink a staggering amount of bottled water – more than 300,800,000 gallons in a year. If all the water bottles consumed each year were laid end-to-end, they would circle the globe more than 11 ½ times.

“These findings are proof of the profound impact of the bottled water industry’s deceptive marketing,” said Leslie Samuelrich, chief of staff at Corporate Accountability International. “For decades, Nestlé and other bottlers have told us what’s in the bottle is somehow better than what’s from the tap. But such misstatements are becoming increasingly hard to swallow for state residents.”

Findings derive from Beverage Marketing Corporation statistics on consumption for 2008. In the year and half since, bottled water sales have taken a nosedive and one in three Americans has switched from the bottle to the tap. In 2009, a GAO report confirmed bottled water to be less regulated than the tap, prompting Congress to subpoena bottlers to provide source and water quality information for their brands.

These developments give all indications that Massachusetts’s thirst for bottled water may be waning, though the state currently ranks 6th in the U.S. in overall consumption. Its state government also spent more than $527,000 in taxpayer dollars on bottled water last year, according to a recent report by Corporate Accountability International.

“Americans are saving money and conserving natural resources by turning away from bottled water; its time that state legislatures did the same,” said EWG analyst Nneka Leiba. “Governor Patrick has championed the renewal of public water systems and can take the next necessary step by issuing an executive order to cut bottled water spending.”

Today, EWG, Corporate Accountability International, and Senator Jamie Eldridge delivered a letter of support from more than a dozen state legislators to the governor’s office asking his administration to prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars to purchase bottled water for non-emergency use.

Governor Patrick has invested more than $185 million in state public water systems and has signaled he will be letting bottled water contracts expire, but has stopped short of issuing an executive order. The petition states that it sends the wrong message about the state’s high quality public water systems when officials charged with the stewardship of such systems spend taxpayer dollars on the bottle.

In fact, nearly half of all bottled water, including Nestlé’s Pure Life and Coke’s Dasani, come from public water systems. Yet, a 2009 survey by EWG of 188 popular bottled water brands found that only two brands surveyed disclosed their water sources and treatment methods on the labels and offered a recent water quality test report on their websites.

It also takes an estimated 2,000 times more energy to produce bottled water than an equivalent amount of tap water – at least 30 million barrels of oil each year just to produce and transport bottled water in the U.S. And each year, three in four bottles, more than four billion pounds of plastic, go unrecycled and wind up in landfills at an annual cost to taxpayers of up to $70 million in tipping fees alone.

All this adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars spent buying bottled water and dealing with the mess afterwards.

“Just imagine the dent those dollars could instead make in the state’s $428 million annual drinking water investment needs and the nation’s ($22 billion) annual funding gap for public water,” said Samuelrich. “Bottled water is consumed in an instant, and the profits go to private hands, while every dollar invested in public water systems injects $6 into the national economy.”

Click here to view the report and for a partial list of states and cities that have cut bottled water.

EWG is a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, DC that uses the power of information to protect human health and the environment. http://www.ewg.org

Corporate Accountability International’s Think Outside The Bottle Campaign works to promote, protect, and ensure public funding for our public water systems. Corporate Accountability International, is a membership organization that protects people by waging and winning campaigns challenging irresponsible and dangerous corporate actions around the world. www.stopcorporateabuse.org/think-outside-bottle

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