What Would You Say to Coke's Executives?

Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet at 4:08 AM on January 30, 2008.

OK, if you live in U.S., you have an important choice to make. You can turn on the tap in your home and get clean, safe drinking water for virtually nothing. Or you can buy bottled water, giving your hard earned dollars to a multinational company for a product that sucks an unnecessary amount of energy and resources, and creates a ton of waste.

If you are thinking you'd like to join the growing number of folks who are waking up and "taking back the tap," then here's a great initiative to get involved with. The folks who created Tappening reusable drinking bottles are asking you to send a note in a bottle that gives your pledge to drink tap over bottled water.

The first one million empty water bottles will all be delivered to incoming Coca Cola (marketer of Dasani bottled water) CEO, Muhter Kent, on his first day on the job this July. All the messages will be posted on the Tappening educational website. Empty water bottles with their messages should be sent to "Tappening" c/o DIGO, 220 East 23rd, Street, New York, New York 10010.

Here's a chance for Coke's excecutives to hear loud and clear, the direction we want our world to be going in. If you still aren't convinced, read these quick facts below from Tappening:

Reasons to not to drink bottled water

• Bottled water uses energy and resources to create packaging for something that runs cheaply and cleanly from the faucet in your own home
• Not only is it expensive and energy demanding to make bottles, but then to ship the bottled water costs more money and isn't eco-friendly
• 96% of bottled water is sold in single-size polyethylene terephthalate plastic bottles, which end up in city trash cans rather than recycling bins. The national recycling rate for all PET bottles, including soda bottles, is 23.1 percent
• About 4 billion PET bottles end up in the waste stream, costing cities around 70 million dollars a year in cleanup and landfill costs
• Bottled water costs around as much as a bottle of soda or juice, which obviously requires additional ingredients and processing, yet people pay for it
• Americans buy 28 billion water bottles a year, all that plastic and the energy used for manufacturing and transportation is very hard on the environment
• In addition to this, few bottles are recycled properly or reused but instead placed into the nearest trash can
• Bottled water costs as much as $10 per gallon compared to less than a penny per gallon for tap waters

Here's some of their great reason to pick tap water:

• Why would you want to pay more for a product whose quality is worse than the water that flows from the faucet in your home?
• More than 99.9 percent of Americans live in homes where unlimited amounts of fresh, treated water is available...so turn on the tap!
• Tap water contains chlorination which kills bacteria
• Water systems that provide tap water have to test for water pathogens that can cause intestinal problems, bottled water companies don't do this
• City tap water can have no confirmed E.coli or fecal coliform bacteria. FDA bottled water rules include no such prohibition (a certain amount of any type of coliform bacteria is allowed in bottled water)
• City tap water, from surface water, must be filtered and disinfected. In contrast, there are no federal filtration or disinfection requirements for bottled water.
• Drinking tap water not only supports mental and physical health, but is easy on the planet. People who buy bottled water are doing harm to the environment and acting out of ignorance
• In one publicized taste test in New York City, conducted by Showtime television, researchers found that 75% of participants actually preferred the taste of tap water to bottled water
• Most cities using surface water have had to test for Cryptosporidium or Giardia, two common water pathogens, that can cause diarrhea and other intestinal problems, yet bottled water companies do not have to do this.
• City tap water must meet standards for certain important toxic or cancer-causing chemicals, such as phthalate (a chemical that can leach from plastic, including plastic bottles); some in the industry persuaded FDA to exempt bottled water from the regulations regarding these chemicals.
• City water systems must issue annual "right to know" reports, telling consumers what is in their water. Bottlers successfully killed a "right to know" requirement for bottled water.
• Tap water is the best water available; according to the New York State Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency, there is nothing harmful in tap water
• For those who feel tap water is any less clean than bottled water, filters may be purchased; buying filter cartridges once or twice a year requires much fewer resources than buying bottled water each day

Tagged as: water, coke, bottled water, tap water

Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet.