Why For Profit Water Companies Are Behind a Bottled Water Backlash

By Richard Girard, Polaris Institute. Posted July 31, 2008.

The United Kingdom has been a central battleground in the bottled water backlash over the past twelve months. We regularly hear news stories in the British press of new anti-bottled water campaigns popping up with catch phrases like "Turn on To Tap Water," "Tap Into Water" and "London on Tap."

One would think that there is a strong grassroots movement in England actively confronting the bottled water industry. While this may be true to a certain extent, the reality is that the majority of the anti-bottled water campaigns in place in the UK are initiatives of for profit private water services companies.

An important grassroots effort of note was undertaken by British food and agriculture advocates called "Sustain" which has published two important reports on bottled water use in the UK. Their 2006 report, Have you bottled it? which examined a number of issues related to bottled water, was coupled with a short report that disclosed the amount of UK government funds spent on bottled water. Sustain's report generated a large amount of press about the issue and helped put pressure on all levels of government in the country to disclose the amount of public monies used for the purchase of bottled water. The 2006 report was followed up in 2008 with an updated version called The taps are turning.

On the heels of Sustain's 2006 report many companies in the UK private water services industry launched anti-bottled water and pro-tap water campaigns. By embarking on pro-tap water campaigns the private water industry is treading in some contradictory territory. On the one hand these companies, as do publicly owned and run water utilities in North America (95 percent of the water utilities in Canada are publicly run, 85 percent in the US), see the bottled water industry as a competitor. In places like Canada public water providers and water utility workers see the bottled water industry working to undermine the public's confidence in tap water. By weaning people off of public tap water in order to consume more and more bottled water, the ground is laid for greater public acceptance of the privatization of water services.

In the UK however, where the public water delivery and treatment system was completely sold off to corporations under Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in 1989, the relationship with the bottled water industry is different (for a detailed briefing on UK water privatization visit Public Services International Research Unit). Private water delivery companies see bottled water as a direct competitor for their product, tap water. By launching high profile pro-tap water and anti-bottled water campaigns, often in collaboration with popular daily newspapers, these initiatives can be seen as nothing more than a renewed form of market advertising for their products.

It is not surprising, then, that the pro tap water movement in the UK has achieved such prominence. With the PR teams from several private water companies working on the issue, and the use of the print media for promotion, it is bound to achieve some prominence.

In the past six months, almost every private water services company in the UK has mounted its own PR campaign promoting tap water. Thames Water (formerly owned by German services giant RWE), the private company in charge of all of London's water and sewerage services, is involved with two high profile campaigns promoting tap water, "London on Tap" and "Water on Tap" with London newspaper The Evening Standard. Both campaigns are designed to promote London's drinking water through restaurants and hotels. These two campaigns alone have generated a huge media response in the UK and have actually been credited with causing a drop in the sale of bottled water.

The UK private water services industry has been using similar tactics to confront the bottled water industry for years. As far back as 2000, Thames Water was claiming in the media to have better tasting water than bottled water. In 2001, another private water company, Yorkshire Water organized a "Tap-v-Cap" challenge that showed 76 percent of the people who participated could not tell the difference between bottled and tap water. In 2004 Yorkshire Water actually trademarked "their" water under the brand Icytonic.

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Richard Girard is the corporate researcher at the Polaris Institute.