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Peter Hollen!

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Mary Traester!
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WRIT 150!
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11/3/14!

Bottled Secrets: Greenwashing in the Bottled Water Industry!

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The bottled water industry has grown to be a market giant in the United States.

But just how big has this unchecked growth really become? In the year of 2013 alone,
over 30 billion bottles of water were sold to Americans, resulting in over $12.3 billion of
profit (Sobelsohn 1). However some experts are questioning the ethical concept of
selling a resource that is fundamentally free and public. These experts in fact do
have grounds in their claims that the bottled water industry is amassing massive profits
from a natural resource that cannot be owned. This essay will seek to illuminate the
strategies that bottled water companies have adopted in order to mask and protect their
control of the water market in the United States. These approaches can be classified as
greenwashing. According to the TerraChoice Environmental Inc, greenwashing is
defined false or misleading marketing claims that serve to bolster the companys
environmental image so that profits will continue to increase. The bottled water industry
has been able to sell a necessarily free resource by using greenwashing strategies
that obscure the true environmental effects of their business and discredit the public
sector of water production.!
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Since the beginning of society, water has acted as a limiting factor for the growth

of civilization. Most cities were founded in areas well garnered by water and the cities
that weren't were forced to insource water from another area. Through history, water
was regarded as a public resource of which the people cannot be deprived. While

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many governments charge small amounts for the services related to water, it remains a
non-private reserve (Natural Society). After the bottled water industry experienced a
plateau in growth during the late 1990s, it revised its advertising plans to create
manufactured demand. In essence they were attempting to create artificial demand for
a resource that is necessarily free. But how have these companies sold bottled water for
2000 times the price of regular tap water? The answer comes from their attack on tap
water and effort to portray bottled water as being better for both health and the
environment. In 2000, Pepsi Cos VP was even quoted saying tap water is the biggest
enemy. Since the late 1990s, there is explicit evidence that the bottled water industry
used greenwashing in their advertising campaigns to alienate public water resources.!
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The first phase of bottled water production in which companies use

greenwashing is the production of the plastic bottles themselves. In America alone, 500
million water bottles are consumed each week (Natural Society). Of course these
statistics are well hidden by the large bottled water corporations, but there is truth
underneath. According to forbes.com, over 1.5 million tons of plastic are used each year
to fuel the bottled water industry. However plastic alone cannot explain the effects of
bottle production on the environment. Forbes also estimates that 1.5 million barrels of
oil are used for plastic water bottle production and transport. However, the bottled water
industry will not allow for these statistics to suppress their profitability. In order to cover
their massive plastic consumption, the bottled water companies have utilized the
hidden-trade-off greenwashing strategy, or suggesting a product is green based on a
single environmental attribute (TerraChoice). This is best seen in companys claims for
individual bottle plastic efficiency. For example, Poland Springs Eco-Friendly water

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bottle has a claim on its label stating that it contains 30% less plastic than the average
water bottle. This label hopes to make people naively believe that the product is
environmentally friendly, when in reality it is just a lesser of two evils. While a 30%
decrease in plastic content can have a very large impact, it none the less puts incredible
stress on the environment and cannot be classified as an environmentally friendly
product (Zeiger 1). The industry is also able to hide oil consumption by completely
ignoring its role. Unfortunately, most people are not aware of the indirect effects of
commercial processing. This allows for the companies to completely not acknowledge
their oil dependency and not have it be a problem with consumers. !
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The next facet of greenwashing in this industry comes from false claims

regarding the sources of water. Bottled water companies are intent on creating an
illusion that their water comes from natural renewable sources. The most simple form of
this greenwashing is imagery seen on the labels. Bottled water labels depict images of
natural green environments for which consumers correlate sustainability with. For
example, Arrowhead uses an idealized image of snow capped mountains with a stream
running down to a bright blue water source in an effort to create an illusion of their water
coming from the highest point of purity and beauty. Every bottle or case includes an
image of some element of the beauty of nature. However the real falsehoods in their
greenwashing strategies lie in their use of descriptive terminologies to invoke thoughts
of purity. Examples of these terms include glacial or spring water. Unfortunately,
there is low regulation on terms like these and they play well into the industrys
greenwashing. The truth of the matter is that one-third of bottled water in the U.S is
regular tap water (Sobelsohn 1). The natural images and descriptive terminology serve

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to hide the true sources of bottled water. For example, while Arrowhead does source
water from snowmelt in Colorado, every bottle consists of 17-25% of filtered tap water
(Natural Resources Defense Council). Bottled water companies also attempt to claim
that their bottled water is environmentally beneficial just because the water is sourced
from an unique environment. Fiji Water went as far as to claim that they are carbonnegative. When in reality, transport of water from the Fiji area is a major consumer of
fossil fuels (Natural Resources Defense Council). The bottled water industry also fails to
mention their effect on groundwater depletion and contamination.!
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The third aspect of the bottled water industrys process is the masking of the

disposal of the billions of plastic bottles. The industrys secrecy surrounding the disposal
of these plastic bottles is a form of greenwashing in itself. The Natural Resources
Defense Council has estimated that only 20% of plastic water bottles are recycled. The
secrecy goes beyond this as forbes.com described multiple accounts of companies
exporting the waste to developing countries such as India to be put in land fills or
incinerated. The bottled water industry would simply be unable to defend such absurd
environmental harm, so they do not mention it at all. These companies have attempted
to obscure the truth through their other greenwashing strategies. Companies have also
tried shift the burden of responsibility of disposal on the government or the people. They
attempt to shift responsibility and claim that they cannot determine the fate of every
single bottle as it is transported from households. In essence, they are making it the
consumers fault in order to avoid scrutiny. This continues to be an incredibly
problematic issue as there is no existing legislation in the U.S that gives the bottled
water industry the responsibility for the disposal of their plastic bottles (Sobelsohn 1).

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The bottled water industry has attempted to alienate tap water from American

markets. In fact, they have been very successful in their efforts . They mimic the
concepts of true nature while simultaneously discrediting the more natural service of
public water usage. The Natural Resources Defense Council stated that public use of
tap water is by far the most sustainable approach to water usage. The use of tap water
avoids massive inputs of oil and plastic, huge inflations in price and the disposal of
billions of plastic bottles, however the bottled water industry still continues to grow 10%
every three years (Sobelsohn 1). These large companies have been able to make
bottled water the better alternative to regular tap water. !
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The bottled water industry attacks tap water in three areas: health, taste and

environmental effect. Firstly, claims are constructed to scare consumers into thinking
that tap water contains contaminants and chemicals that bottled water does not. In
actuality, filtered tap water has proven to be more healthy than bottled water on a
consistent basis. Because tap water is run by the public sector, it is subject to much
more testing and regulations by the FDA than private bottled water (Natural Society).In
fact, experts estimate 60-70% of bottled water is not covered by the FDA because of
loopholes in the system. Taste tests have even revealed that filtered tap water is often
mistaken for bottled water. On a federal level, bottled water and tap water are held to
the same standards; however tap water is much more regulated and tested. Harmful
substances like lead, arsenic, chlorine, rocket fuel and radiation have been found in
bottled water in multiple case studies. However the private industry has been able to
avoid this scrutiny by thrusting claims on public tap water. The corporations massive
size, power and resources allow them to make false and dishonest claims against the

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small and underfunded public sector. According to TerraChoice, dishonest claims or
claims that have no concrete evidence are automatically classified as a form of
greenwashing. Another factor contributing to their success is the lack of advertising
resources that tap water has to argue the claims made by the bottled water industry.
Lastly, the bottled water industry has tried to assert that it is more environmentally
friendly than the tap water system. They are able to make outright false claims about
the environmental benefits of bottled water knowing that the tap water system will be
unable to defend itself or advertise in opposition.!
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However, the tap water system does have deficiencies that has allowed the

bottled water industry to grow so quickly. When evidence was being presented earlier
about the superior regulation of tap water, it was assumed that this tap water was
filtered. Unfortunately there still remains sources of unfiltered tap water in the U.S. A
vast majority of is high quality filtered tap water, but there still are sources that are
unfiltered and contain unhealthy contaminants. The tap water system is not perfect, but
the bottled water industry is not either. These arguments do not seek to prove that the
current tap water system is 100% proficient, only to pursue to illuminate the
greenwashing strategies that enabled an unsustainable private industry to take over a
necessarily free resource. The public water system in the U.S is estimated to be
underfunded by $24 billion dollars each year (Natural Society). An increase in funding
could improve the tap water system and allow no room for attacks from the bottled
water industry. Tap water still remains the best potential water system for a sustainable
planet.

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The vast amount of greenwashing strategies adopted by the water bottle industry

proves the irrationality of selling a public resource. There would be no need to employ
so many false advertisements if the bottled water industry did not see the massive holes
in privately selling a public resource in ways that are completely motivated by profit and
not the health of the public. The tap water system provides the best future for the health
of the environment and for the health of the people because those things are its ultimate
motivation. Profit does not have an effect on its intentions. On a moral basis, we have to
ask ourselves how we can enable the bottled water industry to amass profits from water
sold for over 2000 times the price of public water when over 1 billion people worldwide
do not have access to clean water.!

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Works Cited!
TerraChoice. "The 'Six Sins of Greenwashing'" Terra Choice Environmental Marketing, Nov. !
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2007. Web.!

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Natural Society. "The Bottled Water Deception." Natural Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2014.!
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"Bottled Water." NRDC. National Resources Defense Council, n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2014.!
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Zeiger, Johnathan. "Greenwashing Water Bottles | OnEarth Magazine." Greenwashing Water !
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Bottles | OnEarth Magazine. Onearth, n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2014.!

Sobelsohn, Richard. ""Greenwashing": Deceptive Business Claims of "Eco-Friendliness"" !

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Forbes. Forbes Magazine, n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2014.