Bottled Water

I watched a show on bottled water on the BBC last night about how business were able to create an industry and grow it to make billions of dollars a year (Foods That Make Billions http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w8cll ).

According to the BBC, Margaret Thatcher is responsible for the rise of bottled water in the UK because she started making people pay for water instead of having it freely available. The consumers, then, had an interesting choice, pay for tap water or pay for bottled water. The marketing campaigns that came out for the bottled water persuaded many to choose bottled water.To me, this shows that structures are really in control of our choices. The BBC implied that without Thatcher's charge for water, the bottled water industry would not have had it so easy.

But there's more to the story that simple 'consumer choice' - when Coca-Cola launched Dasani in the UK, it was leaked that they were purifying tap water (as well as adding a few chemicals to give it a certain taste) and selling it. Dasani soon folded as no one was buying 'bottled tap water'. Interestingly, this is the same process that Nestle uses for it's 'Pure Life' water, but people still buy this bottled water. What's the difference? People's perceptions of the products are very different - the BBC nightly news outed Dasani as tap water (and other news media followed), but Nestle seems to have avoided media attention. The social pressure to boycott Dasani worked well to shut down the brand 5 weeks after it opened. I'm not sure if it came back, but it's a great example of the influence social pressure and social perceptions have on our lives.

'One' water was mentioned as an alternative to the big companies' water brands. One influenced the other brands to build wells in developing countries, which is helpful. I haven't had time to look into it, though, but does anyone know if they (One, Volvic, or other companies donating wells) provide maintenance for the wells or only use local materials and technologies that are easily maintained locally?