August 31, 2025 • 24 mins
So, bottled water is kind of a scam. People think it’s healthier and safer, despite zero evidence to back that up. So… is it all just one giant marketing con? Well… kinda.
In this episode, I’m taking you through the wild history of bottled water to show exactly how we ended up here - and why it’s so, so, so ridiculous!
Quick note: I originally did the research and writing for this podcast in July 2024, so the stats I mention are current to that period.
In this episode I go through:
- The surprisingly long history of bottled water (it’s been around way longer than you think)
- What needed to happen to make bottled water a massive global hit
- The weird correlation between bottled water sales and countries that already have safe tap water
- A statistical breakdown of where people are actually buying bottled water
- The shocking differences in testing requirements between bottled and tap water
- How bottled water companies harm the countries they source from
- Why microplastics could be way worse for our bodies than we realise
- Why bottled water isn’t automatically safer than tap water
- The facts about fluoride and chlorine in tap water
- Why nitrates in water are a concern
- The jaw-dropping amount of water it takes just to make one bottle of water
Thanks for joining me on this episode of Because Why?!
Mā te wā - see you next week.
You can get involved with the podcast online in the meantime, of course.
Find our full podcast via the website here: https://www.nowthatwhatsicall.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Can you imagine a Better Business model than getting
something for next to nothing and selling it for thousands,
all whilst lapping out praise and adulation for your
generosity? Well welcome back and brace
yourself because today I'm having a rant about bottled
water. See, 40 or 50 years ago, bottled
water was just not the thing it is today, right?
It has been around for centuries.
(00:20):
In fact, the very first bottled water plants, using the term
loosely, was the Holy Well bottling plant in the UK,
created in 16221622. And you were encouraged to drink
it, bathe in it, and it would kill you of everything from
syphilis, otherwise known somewhat unkindly as the French
disease, to consumption that's tuberculosis, or to rot of the
(00:42):
brain and God knows what they'rereferred to.
Bottled water first became commercially available in 1767
from Boston in the USA. So yes, technically kind of an
American invention. Jackson's Spa bottled their
mineral water to try and share the benefits with all of the
poor people who couldn't get there.
(01:03):
It was a kind thing to do. I sold millions.
So, you know, they kindness paidoff for them.
Then in 1783, Johann Jacob Schweppi peas.
And if you don't get that reference, you don't spend
enough time in TikTok or Schweppe, as it's actually
pronounced. He discovered a way to carbonate
water. So boom, instant soda water.
(01:23):
No prizes as to what company he went on to found back then, some
or maybe most of this water was genuinely safer than the stuff
that came out of the plumbing outside, right?
Because typhoid and cholera werebasically a sure thing if you
drank from most of these public pumps.
You can't blame those that couldafford it for drinking the
bottled stuff. And of course, they may well
have been contaminated too because, you know, there was no
(01:44):
testing. But it seemed safer now.
Chlorination began to be used inaround 19 O 8/19/10 and bottled
water started to lose favor because people realized that the
stuff that came for free out of the pumps outside and eventually
the taps was safer and again, free.
So bottled water kind of dwindled away to nothing bobbing
along the odd mineral sale, nothing exciting.
(02:07):
But then 40 years later, drum roll please, something arrived
that changed the game. And yes, if you're guessing
plastic bottles, you would be correct now.
They were considered a much better alternative for glass
because they didn't break and they were easier to reuse.
Yes, because they were considered more sustainable.
Although the world wasn't used back then as we use it now.
(02:29):
But nothing really happened until polyethylene tetrathalate
bottles arrived. Or you'll know it as Pete or PET
now. They were invented by engineer
Nathaniel Wyeth from DuPont. Note he just made the bottle.
PET has been around for a bit longer and I think it's an
interesting segue into De Pond here because I think they're an
intriguing company because they began life as a gunpowder
(02:50):
company. And they also count some other
inventions, things like CFCS, which were refrigerant gases,
and of course, destroyed the ozone layer, Teflon, which is
problematic. If you go and have a look at
some of the class actions, neoprene and Kevlar.
Now the mission statement is we're using science and
innovation to make the world a safer, healthier and better
(03:11):
place. Now do without what you will.
So now Pete changed the game because it made plastic bottles
cheap, cheap and easy to work with.
So we're in the 1970s, Everybodyis drinking tap water.
Bottled water sales are at an all time low.
And then comes Perrier. You've probably seen Perrier.
It looks almost exactly the samethen as it does now.
(03:31):
It's that beautiful green glass bottle.
So Perrier is a French sparklingwater brand that had been doing
pretty average sales since the 1800s.
And obviously, all of a sudden they got ambitious and they
wanted to enter the US market, which was even back then, the
world's largest consumer market.They hired a clever man, a
marketing executive called BruceNivens.
And in one of the world's most spectacular marketing strategies
(03:53):
you've never heard of, they usedOrson Welles to make water into
the next elite product. Orson Welles, if you don't know
who he was and I didn't, is considered one of the most
influential film makers of all time.
And I will admit, this was one of the only times that celebrity
endorsements have actually worked and worked well, because
look at where we are now. So in the 1970s and 80s, people
(04:15):
beginning to focus on health anddrinking was losing a lot of its
Sheen. And by drinking, I mean alcohol,
of course. So by positioning this fancy
sparkly water as not only being better for you, but making you
look better than your friends, which is a big reason why we buy
a lot of things. They went from 3,000,000 bottles
sold in 1975 to 200 million in 1980.
(04:37):
That is bonkers. Talk about an epic success
story. That's what Incredibles is going
to do. That's my, that's my plan.
Except, you know, no bottles. Anyway, from there, there is a
lot of history. There's a lot of back and forth.
And actually, it's, it's weirdlyinteresting.
But I want to skip to the next part because there's a lot to
this episode. Now, guess who bought Perrier in
1992? Yeah, Nestle, one of my favorite
(05:00):
companies. So Nestle's Pure Life.
No shit. That's actually what they call
the bottled water PR campaign isessentially the mastermind
behind the world's growing obsession with bottled water.
Just a side note, in April, theyhad to destroy 2 million bottles
of their water because it contained bacteria of fecal
origin. So, you know, super pure.
Anyway, this epic marketing and credit where credit is due, they
(05:23):
have masterminded an amazing Pi campaign against tap water has
spread around the world. And yes, they've obviously been
helped by other massive brands like Danone, which is AB Corp if
you were wondering. And now we're where we are.
So where are we? Well, last year, 600 billion
bottles of water was sold, 600 billion.
(05:44):
It's expected to be worth $700 billion in New Zealand in 20-30.
Now the biggest buyer is China, where about 40 billion litres
were sold despite 92% of the population having access to
safe, healthy tap water. Give or take another 40 billion
litres sold in the USA. Note the population difference
where about 99% of the population has access to safe
(06:06):
tap water. Now before you start jumping up
and down and shrieking Flint at me, I'm going to get to it now.
In fact, of the top seven countries that consume bottled
water, only one, Mexico, has more than 10% of the urban
population with unsafe tap waterat 12%.
So the vast, vast, vast majorityof people have access to clean
drinking water. Now obviously if you have unsafe
(06:29):
tap water bottled or treated in some way is the way forward.
I am not talking to those peoplewho have no choice like the
people in Flint, probably one ofthe more infamous cases where
their tap water was contaminatedwith lead due to cost cutting
exercises. The question really is why are
we buying so much bottled water on mass when it's literally on
tap in our homes and when so much money is spent on ensuring
(06:52):
that that tap water is safe and clean.
Now I know I'm going to get a few comments coming through here
talking about things like fluoride and chlorine, and I
will get to those, but one of the biggest arguments is that
people buy bottled water becauseit's convenient.
People are just buying a one offbottle of water at the fuel
station. Well stats would argue with you
because 60% of bottled water sales are at supermarkets and
(07:14):
typically in bulk packs. About 30% occurs in convenience
stores like dairies, and the remaining 10% is places like
restaurants and hotels and and kind of weirdly online.
Who's buying water online? Message me, I want to know why.
So that kind of gives you an indication that the reason
people are buying bottled water is not convenience, it's health.
They have drank the kool-aid, ifyou pardon the clumsy pun, and
(07:37):
they have bought into the myth that bottled water is healthier,
or at least safer. Now, technically not the same
thing. It isn't, statistically
speaking. Of course, there are always
exceptions, as I've mentioned. And why do I have to keep
putting that little disclaimer in there?
Because I can already imagine the comments.
Standards for bottled water are the same as tap water, but the
testing requirements to ensure those standards are upheld are
(07:59):
not. So the requirements are the same
for a lot of contaminants like lead or nitrates, at least in Al
Tierra or New Zealand and the USA and Australia where I've
checked. But the difference is in that
monitoring because tap water is tested much much much more than
bottled water. Tap water has to be tested at
least daily, usually more frequently.
While bottled water, which yes, sometimes comes from the same
(08:22):
places as it tap water, it doesn't come from the magic
water fairy. Those factories have more wiggle
room and they may only do it once a week.
They also don't have to publiclyreport the results as frequently
or at all. Now you might think once a week
sounds like enough right? Because the water source isn't
changing. Just remember some of these
factories are pumping out millions of bottles a day.
So for something to go wrong within that week for a
(08:44):
contaminant to appear, that is potentially 10s of millions of
bottles that have an issue. Now there's been a few studies
done showing incidents of bottled water being less safe
than tap due to this lack of testing so the EWG or the
Environmental working group did one.
But honestly I wouldn't believe them if they told me the sky was
blue so I'm not going to quote that one.
Although just FYI, bottled waterwas worse off.
(09:06):
More importantly, the NRDC, the National Resources Defence
Council from the states, they conducted A4 year study on
bottled water and they analyzed more than 1000 bottles of 103
brands of bottled water. 1/3 of the tested bottled water brands
violated their own industry standards or exceeded state or
federal limits for things like arsenic or synthetic organic
(09:28):
chemicals. That doesn't happen in the tap
water world because it is caught1st and another one done.
This one is my favorite because it's most amusingly done by the
city of Cleveland, who got a little bit pissed off when Fiji
Water did a marketing campaign implying how much better off
their water was. Kind of a bit awkward because we
intested Fiji water contained arsenic, a pretty unpleasant
(09:50):
heavy metal, whereas the city water contained none.
Now side note, Fiji Water as a brand pisses me off so much.
Imagine taking water from a developing nation, profiting off
it in the 10s of millions, and giving salt all of that back to
the place you got it. In fact, it's kind of leaving
the place worse off because where does a lot of that plastic
end up? And no, it's not Fiji you owned.
Now none of this is necessarily saying that bottled water is bad
(10:12):
for you because that's not my point.
My point is that it's not be so for you and that is what people
think. I travel a lot.
I always drink the tap water. I check in some places, but I
always drink the tap water. Someone I travel with on
occasion does not believe that tap water is safe, even in
countries like Australia. That's not to say that that
person is stupid. It is to say that PR marketing
(10:34):
is so insidious and so embedded in there that you don't even
know it is. And I'm just trying to combat
some of that because let's talk about microplastics Now.
A very interesting and slightly terrifying thing to consider is
one of the reasons there aren't that many studies on what
microplastics are doing to us isbecause scientists can't find a
control group. A control group is a group of
(10:55):
people unaffected by the thing that they are testing.
So that is a group of people whodon't contain microplastics.
The bloody things are everywherein your hearts and your
testicles. And they're not being crude.
That study was released a few weeks ago.
And because testicles are for some reason, because it's more
important than hearts, it was everywhere.
So yeah, they're in the water, but they're in 93% of bottled
(11:16):
water versus 83% of Tet water samples.
And yes, those are stats from studies and they all vary a
little bit, but that's roughly the ratio.
But this is unsurprising as theyare literally packaged in
plastic. So of course, bottled water is
more likely contain microplastics.
But the worst bit is the amount.Bottled water contains on
average 325 microplastic particles per litre, whilst tap
(11:37):
was only 5.4. Now, we don't know what
microplastics are doing to us, but I don't think any of us
think that it's good because unfortunately, amongst all of
the wonderful properties plastics have, they have this
cute little chemical property where they absorb other
chemicals onto this surface. So they're often contaminated
with worse things like dioxins, for example.
(11:58):
So they're quite possibly a transport system if you like,
but these chemicals, they ordinarily find it difficult to
get in because our bodies are pretty good at keeping things
out. Except not microplastics.
We cannot keep them out. And of course, the more bottled
water we buy, the more micro plastics we create.
So it's a vicious little cycle. So hopefully you might be
considering that maybe bottled water isn't safer than tap, but
(12:19):
it's definitely healthier, right?
Because they all say pure in some form or other.
They've got pictures of waterfalls or tropical islands
or a happy woman on the front. Girl smiles at salad.
Sure, some mineral waters. And the key here is some have
higher levels of things like magnesium, which if you're
deficient in it can be helpful. But by and large these health
benefits are massively overstated.
(12:41):
And and actually the vast vast majority of bottled water isn't
from mineral springs anyway. Some is for sure, but most
isn't. But Jude isn't very clever
lobbying by big water, which is 100% a phrase I'm using from now
on. The definition of spring water
is really weak. So the stuff in your bottle is
probably from the same place as your tap and you're just paying
(13:02):
a lot more for it, in some cases24,000 times more for it.
No, a lot of this hyper and mineral and spring water comes
from way back when and like so many things in the 1900s, this
pretty dubious evidence or none.Which brings me to my very
favorite bottled water example, Radathor.
What was Radathor you ask? Well, it was radium infused
(13:23):
drinking water of course. If you want to read more about
Radathor because I'm not going to talk about it much, there is
an article still available online with my favorite Eva
headline. The radium water worked fine
until his jaw came off. Honestly, go and read about it.
Radium is a wonderfully radioactive element that the
body recognizes to be similar inmany ways to calcium, so it
(13:44):
incorporates it in your teeth and bones.
Unfortunately, because it is radioactive, it continually
emits radioactive particles and waves until those parts of you
fall apart. Maybe there's hep surgery to
come. A content warning.
If you haven't read a book called The Radium Girls, I
really encourage you to because their horrific story is a huge
reason why we actually have occupational health and safety
(14:05):
laws. And if you really want to feel
ill, Google Radium Jaw. Now I could talk ad nauseam
about radiation because I actually find it so fascinating,
but why am I bringing this horreenous example up?
Because yeah, the bottled water we're drinking isn't going to
make your teeth fall out. But people seem to have this
peculiar belief that if it's in a bottle, and particularly if it
says mineral or spring on it, then it's healthier.
(14:27):
We have a belief that these businesses aren't lying to us,
which is odd because cynicism against corporates is at an all
time high. And yet what we say about these
companies and what we do in the supermarkets are two totally
different things. And despite significantly
thankfully, stricter standards than Radar Thor Days, these
businesses are still misleading you.
(14:48):
The stuff in the bottles is no better for you than the stuff in
the tap. 99.9999999 times out of100.
OK fine, let's talk about fluoride and chlorine.
Both are commonly added to tap water for safety and health
benefits. Yes, because they are safe.
Both are proven over and over and over to be safe at the
concentrations of which we add them without question.
(15:11):
Both can be nasty chemicals, butwe all know now that the dose
makes the poison. Water is enormously dangerous
and will kill you itself if you drink too much, but no one
really gets excited about that. So chlorine is used in tiny,
tiny concentrations in Altera, around 0.2 parts per million.
The Who, the World Health Organization considers up to
five parts per million, or 25 times higher, to be safe.
(15:36):
It doesn't fix water, so it makes sure that the water
doesn't make you sick because yes, a lot of our aquifers are
now contaminated with amoebas orthings like E coli.
Yes, sometimes if it's high but stillwell under 0.5 past
1,000,000, you can taste or smell it.
But there is an easy solution. You can either get a filter like
a Brita filter for example, or even easier, just leave the
(15:57):
water sit for a while and most of that chlorine evaporates.
So throw a jug of water in the fridge and by the time you go
back to it in a couple of hours,the chlorine taste will mostly
be gone. Fluoride does not evaporate, so
if it's in your tap water, you will be consuming it.
Now it is added to prevent toothdecay, and it has been endorsed
by numerous health organizations.
Every scientist who studied it who wasn't, you know, a liar or
(16:19):
a charlatan, including The Who and the CDC Center for Disease
Control for its role in improving dental health.
If you want to be really shocked, go and have a look at
the standards of dental health. And now Toyota, they're not
great. And this is precisely why it is
added Now there are concerns about fluoride being a
neurotoxin and they stem from really high dose studies where
yes, again, it's not an ice chemical at high concentrations
(16:43):
because dose makes the poison, but the levels used in water
fluoridation are considered perfectly safe and beneficial by
health authorities. So in New Zealand, this is
between 0.7 to one part per million.
The safe level set by The Who is1.5 parts per million, although
in the USA the EPA actually set it at 4 parts per million, and
(17:03):
so that's much higher. So we are well, well, well below
the safe threshold for fluoride.There is often more fluoride and
things like grapes and raisins and wine, fruit, vegetables,
tea, coffee, it's pretty common.You're probably consuming more
of it than you think. And it is, of course, worth
noting that bottled water may ormay not contain fluoride,
depending on the brand and the source.
(17:23):
Then I think there's something that's actually more important
for a lot of us, which is nitrates, because this is
becoming a greater concern, especially as the link between
nitrates and bowel cancer is becoming stronger and stronger.
Now, nitrates end up in our water due to runoff from farming
practices, and some of our freshwater is pretty contaminated
with them. Now, as I mentioned, tap water
(17:44):
is monitored strictly and those of you on town supply are good
to go. Those of us in rural areas may
want to pay that little bit moreattention.
Not only are we more likely to be contaminated with nitrates,
but those of us on wells, we don't have that monitoring.
So you may want to go and get your water tested.
Some places will do it for free and if it's high, your best bet
is to get some kind of filtration in.
(18:05):
But fun fact again, bottled water might contain nitrates
too, because again, lots of it comes from the same place and
they have the exact same standards on nitrates as tap
water. Those that actually come from
spring water, which are deep upwellings of fresh water.
So for some reason they're healthier despite no basis in
science. They potentially will have lower
levels as they're hopefully not contaminated yet, but you know,
(18:26):
give it time. Oh and alkaline water.
Absolute rubbish and on sets called bollocks.
I won't even bother talking about it.
So please, please stop wasting money on something that cannot
possibly work because you cannotchange the pH of your body and I
promise you, if you did, you would die horribly.
Now disappointingly, not everyone else here has access to
safe tap water. Boil water notices are active in
(18:47):
a few places for several reasonsand have been active for a long
time now. I'm not talking to those people.
I feel sorry for you, I think it's a disgrace.
But it is worth noting that the long term solution to unsafe tap
water is not buying bottled water.
How is that fair or sustainable?Governments need to pull finger
now. Despite all this evidence, most
people when surveyed think bottled water is safer.
(19:08):
That is how pervasive the marketing is.
You can't blame people in Flint for buying bottled water, even
when over 97% of the plumbing has since been replaced and
massively rigorous testing has been implemented, because
they've lost faith. But why are we buying it here in
Altira? Have you ever wondered where the
bottled water you buy actually comes from?
Because the sources of many of these brands are pretty Gray.
(19:31):
And whilst they may say spring, as I pointed out before, this
definition is a bit Gray. There are plenty of documented
cases where what was said to be spring water is in fact bog
standard water out of an aquifer.
I mean, you just pay a lot more for it.
There are huge core cases against a lot of brands around
the world about this. Nestle being one of the worst,
which is of course an enormous surprise to all of us.
(19:54):
And companies pay as little as $200 in licensing fees to pump
out millions of liters of water.And that's not AUS stat, that is
a New Zealand stat. It's hard to find sources for
this. It's funnily enough they don't
want it out there. But licensing fees are out there
for you to go and read about if you want to.
But one company that the data isvery publicly available for is
Orovida. Oroveda pays about $500 annually
(20:17):
to draw up to 400,000 liters of water per day from the Autakeri
aquifer in the Bay of Plenty. And if you can't do that maths
and you're here because I can't,that's about 146,000,000 litres
per year, costing them about $526 in compliance fees.
Now whilst you're digesting that, I'm going to read you some
of the marketing as I think it'shilarious.
(20:38):
The water originates in Antarctica, where Gale force
winds convert the ice crystals into water vapor, which is
carried by the jet stream winds to New Zealand or Altiora, the
land of the long white cloud. Isn't that romantic?
I never thought that I could fall in love with water crystals
before, but here we are. Still, it is better than
anything Jet GPT could have written I suppose.
(21:00):
But putting that aside, it should really annoy people that
companies are bottling a naturalresource for Soddle and selling
it for enormous profits, destroying ecosystems by
removing massive quantities of water and polluting the
environment with plastic. And we're paying them for it.
Have you ever sat down and thought how entirely bonkers
that is? And finally, because this was
(21:21):
supposed to be a short episode, let's talk about those bottles.
Most water bottles, as I mentioned before, are made of
PET Pete, which is technically recyclable but often just isn't
due to the sheer volume of them.So that's about 31% recycled in
New Zealand and 36% in Australia.
And most bottles aren't made of recycled plastic because it's
cheaper to buy virgin plastic than recycled.
So why would a company do it? And I do actually remember
(21:44):
asking one of our former prime ministers who was still in
office at the time why we didn'timplement a tax on virgin
plastic to try and encourage more recycling, and the answer
was really disappointing. Basically, it's too complicated
and it wouldn't work. Really, I feel like it would.
Granted, I'm not a tax expert, so I will leave that to the
experts. And if we talk about water
waste, for every one liter of bottled water, it takes 3 liters
(22:08):
of water to make it because it takes about 1.5 liters of water
to make the plastic bottle and then the rest for processing.
So the volume of water used in bottled products is actually
three times higher than you thought.
So if we look at some fast factson these plastic bottles, in Al
Sierra, we use 11,000 tons of plastic bottles each year.
That's a growing number. And 69% of these end up in
landfill or worse, the ocean. In Australia, they use
(22:30):
373,000,000 plastic bottles every year just for bottled
water and over 60% of those willnot be recycled.
And brace yourself because I thought I'd throw the USA in
here for, you know, a real quantification or horrendous.
This problem is, Americans use 50 billion plastic water bottles
every year. 35 billion of them are not recycled.
(22:51):
And finally, water shortages arebecoming worse and worse.
And they will continue to as climate change continues to bite
and we continue to treat our freshwater with blatant
disregard. Now, bottled water certainly
isn't the biggest driver of this, but it is a significant
contributor. Putting everything else I've
talked about aside, there isn't actually too much info about
this, but about 83,000,000 litres of water are trapped in
(23:13):
the landfill every year by people throwing away bottles
that are empty. Of course, trapped in a plastic
bottle that doesn't break down. Don't.
I said breakdown. Of course water that's trapped
in a plastic bottle that doesn'tbreak up into microplastics for
four, 5-6 hundred years can't evaporate, so it's trapped there
for a very long time and effectively removed from the
water cycle. Freshwater is a finite resource.
So yeah, let's stop falling for the hype.
(23:36):
Embrace the tap, ban the bottle,go plastic free, however you
want to phrase it. Let's stop lining the pockets of
companies who are manipulating us into buying stuff that they
effectively get for free. This is a really funny episode
to write, actually kind of even raging, but a lot of fun and I
hope it's been interesting. If you want to know more, there
is a fabulous series on Netflix called Rotten and they have a
(23:57):
particular episode on bottled water.
But they do cover some others, like avocados for example, which
are way more bloody and war-tornthan you might imagine.
But yeah, if you're going somewhere, take you a reusable
water bottle. Kyoto Kajiaki.
Have a wonderful week.
Can you imagine a Better Business model than getting
something for next to nothing and selling it for thousands,
all whilst lapping out praise and adulation for your
generosity? Well welcome back and brace
yourself because today I'm having a rant about bottled
water. See, 40 or 50 years ago, bottled
water was just not the thing it is today, right?
It has been around for centuries.
(00:20):
In fact, the very first bottled water plants, using the term
loosely, was the Holy Well bottling plant in the UK,
created in 16221622. And you were encouraged to drink
it, bathe in it, and it would kill you of everything from
syphilis, otherwise known somewhat unkindly as the French
disease, to consumption that's tuberculosis, or to rot of the
(00:42):
brain and God knows what they'rereferred to.
Bottled water first became commercially available in 1767
from Boston in the USA. So yes, technically kind of an
American invention. Jackson's Spa bottled their
mineral water to try and share the benefits with all of the
poor people who couldn't get there.
(01:03):
It was a kind thing to do. I sold millions.
So, you know, they kindness paidoff for them.
Then in 1783, Johann Jacob Schweppi peas.
And if you don't get that reference, you don't spend
enough time in TikTok or Schweppe, as it's actually
pronounced. He discovered a way to carbonate
water. So boom, instant soda water.
(01:23):
No prizes as to what company he went on to found back then, some
or maybe most of this water was genuinely safer than the stuff
that came out of the plumbing outside, right?
Because typhoid and cholera werebasically a sure thing if you
drank from most of these public pumps.
You can't blame those that couldafford it for drinking the
bottled stuff. And of course, they may well
have been contaminated too because, you know, there was no
(01:44):
testing. But it seemed safer now.
Chlorination began to be used inaround 19 O 8/19/10 and bottled
water started to lose favor because people realized that the
stuff that came for free out of the pumps outside and eventually
the taps was safer and again, free.
So bottled water kind of dwindled away to nothing bobbing
along the odd mineral sale, nothing exciting.
(02:07):
But then 40 years later, drum roll please, something arrived
that changed the game. And yes, if you're guessing
plastic bottles, you would be correct now.
They were considered a much better alternative for glass
because they didn't break and they were easier to reuse.
Yes, because they were considered more sustainable.
Although the world wasn't used back then as we use it now.
(02:29):
But nothing really happened until polyethylene tetrathalate
bottles arrived. Or you'll know it as Pete or PET
now. They were invented by engineer
Nathaniel Wyeth from DuPont. Note he just made the bottle.
PET has been around for a bit longer and I think it's an
interesting segue into De Pond here because I think they're an
intriguing company because they began life as a gunpowder
(02:50):
company. And they also count some other
inventions, things like CFCS, which were refrigerant gases,
and of course, destroyed the ozone layer, Teflon, which is
problematic. If you go and have a look at
some of the class actions, neoprene and Kevlar.
Now the mission statement is we're using science and
innovation to make the world a safer, healthier and better
(03:11):
place. Now do without what you will.
So now Pete changed the game because it made plastic bottles
cheap, cheap and easy to work with.
So we're in the 1970s, Everybodyis drinking tap water.
Bottled water sales are at an all time low.
And then comes Perrier. You've probably seen Perrier.
It looks almost exactly the samethen as it does now.
(03:31):
It's that beautiful green glass bottle.
So Perrier is a French sparklingwater brand that had been doing
pretty average sales since the 1800s.
And obviously, all of a sudden they got ambitious and they
wanted to enter the US market, which was even back then, the
world's largest consumer market.They hired a clever man, a
marketing executive called BruceNivens.
And in one of the world's most spectacular marketing strategies
(03:53):
you've never heard of, they usedOrson Welles to make water into
the next elite product. Orson Welles, if you don't know
who he was and I didn't, is considered one of the most
influential film makers of all time.
And I will admit, this was one of the only times that celebrity
endorsements have actually worked and worked well, because
look at where we are now. So in the 1970s and 80s, people
(04:15):
beginning to focus on health anddrinking was losing a lot of its
Sheen. And by drinking, I mean alcohol,
of course. So by positioning this fancy
sparkly water as not only being better for you, but making you
look better than your friends, which is a big reason why we buy
a lot of things. They went from 3,000,000 bottles
sold in 1975 to 200 million in 1980.
(04:37):
That is bonkers. Talk about an epic success
story. That's what Incredibles is going
to do. That's my, that's my plan.
Except, you know, no bottles. Anyway, from there, there is a
lot of history. There's a lot of back and forth.
And actually, it's, it's weirdlyinteresting.
But I want to skip to the next part because there's a lot to
this episode. Now, guess who bought Perrier in
1992? Yeah, Nestle, one of my favorite
(05:00):
companies. So Nestle's Pure Life.
No shit. That's actually what they call
the bottled water PR campaign isessentially the mastermind
behind the world's growing obsession with bottled water.
Just a side note, in April, theyhad to destroy 2 million bottles
of their water because it contained bacteria of fecal
origin. So, you know, super pure.
Anyway, this epic marketing and credit where credit is due, they
(05:23):
have masterminded an amazing Pi campaign against tap water has
spread around the world. And yes, they've obviously been
helped by other massive brands like Danone, which is AB Corp if
you were wondering. And now we're where we are.
So where are we? Well, last year, 600 billion
bottles of water was sold, 600 billion.
(05:44):
It's expected to be worth $700 billion in New Zealand in 20-30.
Now the biggest buyer is China, where about 40 billion litres
were sold despite 92% of the population having access to
safe, healthy tap water. Give or take another 40 billion
litres sold in the USA. Note the population difference
where about 99% of the population has access to safe
(06:06):
tap water. Now before you start jumping up
and down and shrieking Flint at me, I'm going to get to it now.
In fact, of the top seven countries that consume bottled
water, only one, Mexico, has more than 10% of the urban
population with unsafe tap waterat 12%.
So the vast, vast, vast majorityof people have access to clean
drinking water. Now obviously if you have unsafe
(06:29):
tap water bottled or treated in some way is the way forward.
I am not talking to those peoplewho have no choice like the
people in Flint, probably one ofthe more infamous cases where
their tap water was contaminatedwith lead due to cost cutting
exercises. The question really is why are
we buying so much bottled water on mass when it's literally on
tap in our homes and when so much money is spent on ensuring
(06:52):
that that tap water is safe and clean.
Now I know I'm going to get a few comments coming through here
talking about things like fluoride and chlorine, and I
will get to those, but one of the biggest arguments is that
people buy bottled water becauseit's convenient.
People are just buying a one offbottle of water at the fuel
station. Well stats would argue with you
because 60% of bottled water sales are at supermarkets and
(07:14):
typically in bulk packs. About 30% occurs in convenience
stores like dairies, and the remaining 10% is places like
restaurants and hotels and and kind of weirdly online.
Who's buying water online? Message me, I want to know why.
So that kind of gives you an indication that the reason
people are buying bottled water is not convenience, it's health.
They have drank the kool-aid, ifyou pardon the clumsy pun, and
(07:37):
they have bought into the myth that bottled water is healthier,
or at least safer. Now, technically not the same
thing. It isn't, statistically
speaking. Of course, there are always
exceptions, as I've mentioned. And why do I have to keep
putting that little disclaimer in there?
Because I can already imagine the comments.
Standards for bottled water are the same as tap water, but the
testing requirements to ensure those standards are upheld are
(07:59):
not. So the requirements are the same
for a lot of contaminants like lead or nitrates, at least in Al
Tierra or New Zealand and the USA and Australia where I've
checked. But the difference is in that
monitoring because tap water is tested much much much more than
bottled water. Tap water has to be tested at
least daily, usually more frequently.
While bottled water, which yes, sometimes comes from the same
(08:22):
places as it tap water, it doesn't come from the magic
water fairy. Those factories have more wiggle
room and they may only do it once a week.
They also don't have to publiclyreport the results as frequently
or at all. Now you might think once a week
sounds like enough right? Because the water source isn't
changing. Just remember some of these
factories are pumping out millions of bottles a day.
So for something to go wrong within that week for a
(08:44):
contaminant to appear, that is potentially 10s of millions of
bottles that have an issue. Now there's been a few studies
done showing incidents of bottled water being less safe
than tap due to this lack of testing so the EWG or the
Environmental working group did one.
But honestly I wouldn't believe them if they told me the sky was
blue so I'm not going to quote that one.
Although just FYI, bottled waterwas worse off.
(09:06):
More importantly, the NRDC, the National Resources Defence
Council from the states, they conducted A4 year study on
bottled water and they analyzed more than 1000 bottles of 103
brands of bottled water. 1/3 of the tested bottled water brands
violated their own industry standards or exceeded state or
federal limits for things like arsenic or synthetic organic
(09:28):
chemicals. That doesn't happen in the tap
water world because it is caught1st and another one done.
This one is my favorite because it's most amusingly done by the
city of Cleveland, who got a little bit pissed off when Fiji
Water did a marketing campaign implying how much better off
their water was. Kind of a bit awkward because we
intested Fiji water contained arsenic, a pretty unpleasant
(09:50):
heavy metal, whereas the city water contained none.
Now side note, Fiji Water as a brand pisses me off so much.
Imagine taking water from a developing nation, profiting off
it in the 10s of millions, and giving salt all of that back to
the place you got it. In fact, it's kind of leaving
the place worse off because where does a lot of that plastic
end up? And no, it's not Fiji you owned.
Now none of this is necessarily saying that bottled water is bad
(10:12):
for you because that's not my point.
My point is that it's not be so for you and that is what people
think. I travel a lot.
I always drink the tap water. I check in some places, but I
always drink the tap water. Someone I travel with on
occasion does not believe that tap water is safe, even in
countries like Australia. That's not to say that that
person is stupid. It is to say that PR marketing
(10:34):
is so insidious and so embedded in there that you don't even
know it is. And I'm just trying to combat
some of that because let's talk about microplastics Now.
A very interesting and slightly terrifying thing to consider is
one of the reasons there aren't that many studies on what
microplastics are doing to us isbecause scientists can't find a
control group. A control group is a group of
(10:55):
people unaffected by the thing that they are testing.
So that is a group of people whodon't contain microplastics.
The bloody things are everywherein your hearts and your
testicles. And they're not being crude.
That study was released a few weeks ago.
And because testicles are for some reason, because it's more
important than hearts, it was everywhere.
So yeah, they're in the water, but they're in 93% of bottled
(11:16):
water versus 83% of Tet water samples.
And yes, those are stats from studies and they all vary a
little bit, but that's roughly the ratio.
But this is unsurprising as theyare literally packaged in
plastic. So of course, bottled water is
more likely contain microplastics.
But the worst bit is the amount.Bottled water contains on
average 325 microplastic particles per litre, whilst tap
(11:37):
was only 5.4. Now, we don't know what
microplastics are doing to us, but I don't think any of us
think that it's good because unfortunately, amongst all of
the wonderful properties plastics have, they have this
cute little chemical property where they absorb other
chemicals onto this surface. So they're often contaminated
with worse things like dioxins, for example.
(11:58):
So they're quite possibly a transport system if you like,
but these chemicals, they ordinarily find it difficult to
get in because our bodies are pretty good at keeping things
out. Except not microplastics.
We cannot keep them out. And of course, the more bottled
water we buy, the more micro plastics we create.
So it's a vicious little cycle. So hopefully you might be
considering that maybe bottled water isn't safer than tap, but
(12:19):
it's definitely healthier, right?
Because they all say pure in some form or other.
They've got pictures of waterfalls or tropical islands
or a happy woman on the front. Girl smiles at salad.
Sure, some mineral waters. And the key here is some have
higher levels of things like magnesium, which if you're
deficient in it can be helpful. But by and large these health
benefits are massively overstated.
(12:41):
And and actually the vast vast majority of bottled water isn't
from mineral springs anyway. Some is for sure, but most
isn't. But Jude isn't very clever
lobbying by big water, which is 100% a phrase I'm using from now
on. The definition of spring water
is really weak. So the stuff in your bottle is
probably from the same place as your tap and you're just paying
(13:02):
a lot more for it, in some cases24,000 times more for it.
No, a lot of this hyper and mineral and spring water comes
from way back when and like so many things in the 1900s, this
pretty dubious evidence or none.Which brings me to my very
favorite bottled water example, Radathor.
What was Radathor you ask? Well, it was radium infused
(13:23):
drinking water of course. If you want to read more about
Radathor because I'm not going to talk about it much, there is
an article still available online with my favorite Eva
headline. The radium water worked fine
until his jaw came off. Honestly, go and read about it.
Radium is a wonderfully radioactive element that the
body recognizes to be similar inmany ways to calcium, so it
(13:44):
incorporates it in your teeth and bones.
Unfortunately, because it is radioactive, it continually
emits radioactive particles and waves until those parts of you
fall apart. Maybe there's hep surgery to
come. A content warning.
If you haven't read a book called The Radium Girls, I
really encourage you to because their horrific story is a huge
reason why we actually have occupational health and safety
(14:05):
laws. And if you really want to feel
ill, Google Radium Jaw. Now I could talk ad nauseam
about radiation because I actually find it so fascinating,
but why am I bringing this horreenous example up?
Because yeah, the bottled water we're drinking isn't going to
make your teeth fall out. But people seem to have this
peculiar belief that if it's in a bottle, and particularly if it
says mineral or spring on it, then it's healthier.
(14:27):
We have a belief that these businesses aren't lying to us,
which is odd because cynicism against corporates is at an all
time high. And yet what we say about these
companies and what we do in the supermarkets are two totally
different things. And despite significantly
thankfully, stricter standards than Radar Thor Days, these
businesses are still misleading you.
(14:48):
The stuff in the bottles is no better for you than the stuff in
the tap. 99.9999999 times out of100.
OK fine, let's talk about fluoride and chlorine.
Both are commonly added to tap water for safety and health
benefits. Yes, because they are safe.
Both are proven over and over and over to be safe at the
concentrations of which we add them without question.
(15:11):
Both can be nasty chemicals, butwe all know now that the dose
makes the poison. Water is enormously dangerous
and will kill you itself if you drink too much, but no one
really gets excited about that. So chlorine is used in tiny,
tiny concentrations in Altera, around 0.2 parts per million.
The Who, the World Health Organization considers up to
five parts per million, or 25 times higher, to be safe.
(15:36):
It doesn't fix water, so it makes sure that the water
doesn't make you sick because yes, a lot of our aquifers are
now contaminated with amoebas orthings like E coli.
Yes, sometimes if it's high but stillwell under 0.5 past
1,000,000, you can taste or smell it.
But there is an easy solution. You can either get a filter like
a Brita filter for example, or even easier, just leave the
(15:57):
water sit for a while and most of that chlorine evaporates.
So throw a jug of water in the fridge and by the time you go
back to it in a couple of hours,the chlorine taste will mostly
be gone. Fluoride does not evaporate, so
if it's in your tap water, you will be consuming it.
Now it is added to prevent toothdecay, and it has been endorsed
by numerous health organizations.
Every scientist who studied it who wasn't, you know, a liar or
(16:19):
a charlatan, including The Who and the CDC Center for Disease
Control for its role in improving dental health.
If you want to be really shocked, go and have a look at
the standards of dental health. And now Toyota, they're not
great. And this is precisely why it is
added Now there are concerns about fluoride being a
neurotoxin and they stem from really high dose studies where
yes, again, it's not an ice chemical at high concentrations
(16:43):
because dose makes the poison, but the levels used in water
fluoridation are considered perfectly safe and beneficial by
health authorities. So in New Zealand, this is
between 0.7 to one part per million.
The safe level set by The Who is1.5 parts per million, although
in the USA the EPA actually set it at 4 parts per million, and
(17:03):
so that's much higher. So we are well, well, well below
the safe threshold for fluoride.There is often more fluoride and
things like grapes and raisins and wine, fruit, vegetables,
tea, coffee, it's pretty common.You're probably consuming more
of it than you think. And it is, of course, worth
noting that bottled water may ormay not contain fluoride,
depending on the brand and the source.
(17:23):
Then I think there's something that's actually more important
for a lot of us, which is nitrates, because this is
becoming a greater concern, especially as the link between
nitrates and bowel cancer is becoming stronger and stronger.
Now, nitrates end up in our water due to runoff from farming
practices, and some of our freshwater is pretty contaminated
with them. Now, as I mentioned, tap water
(17:44):
is monitored strictly and those of you on town supply are good
to go. Those of us in rural areas may
want to pay that little bit moreattention.
Not only are we more likely to be contaminated with nitrates,
but those of us on wells, we don't have that monitoring.
So you may want to go and get your water tested.
Some places will do it for free and if it's high, your best bet
is to get some kind of filtration in.
(18:05):
But fun fact again, bottled water might contain nitrates
too, because again, lots of it comes from the same place and
they have the exact same standards on nitrates as tap
water. Those that actually come from
spring water, which are deep upwellings of fresh water.
So for some reason they're healthier despite no basis in
science. They potentially will have lower
levels as they're hopefully not contaminated yet, but you know,
(18:26):
give it time. Oh and alkaline water.
Absolute rubbish and on sets called bollocks.
I won't even bother talking about it.
So please, please stop wasting money on something that cannot
possibly work because you cannotchange the pH of your body and I
promise you, if you did, you would die horribly.
Now disappointingly, not everyone else here has access to
safe tap water. Boil water notices are active in
(18:47):
a few places for several reasonsand have been active for a long
time now. I'm not talking to those people.
I feel sorry for you, I think it's a disgrace.
But it is worth noting that the long term solution to unsafe tap
water is not buying bottled water.
How is that fair or sustainable?Governments need to pull finger
now. Despite all this evidence, most
people when surveyed think bottled water is safer.
(19:08):
That is how pervasive the marketing is.
You can't blame people in Flint for buying bottled water, even
when over 97% of the plumbing has since been replaced and
massively rigorous testing has been implemented, because
they've lost faith. But why are we buying it here in
Altira? Have you ever wondered where the
bottled water you buy actually comes from?
Because the sources of many of these brands are pretty Gray.
(19:31):
And whilst they may say spring, as I pointed out before, this
definition is a bit Gray. There are plenty of documented
cases where what was said to be spring water is in fact bog
standard water out of an aquifer.
I mean, you just pay a lot more for it.
There are huge core cases against a lot of brands around
the world about this. Nestle being one of the worst,
which is of course an enormous surprise to all of us.
(19:54):
And companies pay as little as $200 in licensing fees to pump
out millions of liters of water.And that's not AUS stat, that is
a New Zealand stat. It's hard to find sources for
this. It's funnily enough they don't
want it out there. But licensing fees are out there
for you to go and read about if you want to.
But one company that the data isvery publicly available for is
Orovida. Oroveda pays about $500 annually
(20:17):
to draw up to 400,000 liters of water per day from the Autakeri
aquifer in the Bay of Plenty. And if you can't do that maths
and you're here because I can't,that's about 146,000,000 litres
per year, costing them about $526 in compliance fees.
Now whilst you're digesting that, I'm going to read you some
of the marketing as I think it'shilarious.
(20:38):
The water originates in Antarctica, where Gale force
winds convert the ice crystals into water vapor, which is
carried by the jet stream winds to New Zealand or Altiora, the
land of the long white cloud. Isn't that romantic?
I never thought that I could fall in love with water crystals
before, but here we are. Still, it is better than
anything Jet GPT could have written I suppose.
(21:00):
But putting that aside, it should really annoy people that
companies are bottling a naturalresource for Soddle and selling
it for enormous profits, destroying ecosystems by
removing massive quantities of water and polluting the
environment with plastic. And we're paying them for it.
Have you ever sat down and thought how entirely bonkers
that is? And finally, because this was
(21:21):
supposed to be a short episode, let's talk about those bottles.
Most water bottles, as I mentioned before, are made of
PET Pete, which is technically recyclable but often just isn't
due to the sheer volume of them.So that's about 31% recycled in
New Zealand and 36% in Australia.
And most bottles aren't made of recycled plastic because it's
cheaper to buy virgin plastic than recycled.
So why would a company do it? And I do actually remember
(21:44):
asking one of our former prime ministers who was still in
office at the time why we didn'timplement a tax on virgin
plastic to try and encourage more recycling, and the answer
was really disappointing. Basically, it's too complicated
and it wouldn't work. Really, I feel like it would.
Granted, I'm not a tax expert, so I will leave that to the
experts. And if we talk about water
waste, for every one liter of bottled water, it takes 3 liters
(22:08):
of water to make it because it takes about 1.5 liters of water
to make the plastic bottle and then the rest for processing.
So the volume of water used in bottled products is actually
three times higher than you thought.
So if we look at some fast factson these plastic bottles, in Al
Sierra, we use 11,000 tons of plastic bottles each year.
That's a growing number. And 69% of these end up in
landfill or worse, the ocean. In Australia, they use
(22:30):
373,000,000 plastic bottles every year just for bottled
water and over 60% of those willnot be recycled.
And brace yourself because I thought I'd throw the USA in
here for, you know, a real quantification or horrendous.
This problem is, Americans use 50 billion plastic water bottles
every year. 35 billion of them are not recycled.
(22:51):
And finally, water shortages arebecoming worse and worse.
And they will continue to as climate change continues to bite
and we continue to treat our freshwater with blatant
disregard. Now, bottled water certainly
isn't the biggest driver of this, but it is a significant
contributor. Putting everything else I've
talked about aside, there isn't actually too much info about
this, but about 83,000,000 litres of water are trapped in
(23:13):
the landfill every year by people throwing away bottles
that are empty. Of course, trapped in a plastic
bottle that doesn't break down. Don't.
I said breakdown. Of course water that's trapped
in a plastic bottle that doesn'tbreak up into microplastics for
four, 5-6 hundred years can't evaporate, so it's trapped there
for a very long time and effectively removed from the
water cycle. Freshwater is a finite resource.
So yeah, let's stop falling for the hype.
(23:36):
Embrace the tap, ban the bottle,go plastic free, however you
want to phrase it. Let's stop lining the pockets of
companies who are manipulating us into buying stuff that they
effectively get for free. This is a really funny episode
to write, actually kind of even raging, but a lot of fun and I
hope it's been interesting. If you want to know more, there
is a fabulous series on Netflix called Rotten and they have a
(23:57):
particular episode on bottled water.
But they do cover some others, like avocados for example, which
are way more bloody and war-tornthan you might imagine.
But yeah, if you're going somewhere, take you a reusable
water bottle. Kyoto Kajiaki.
Have a wonderful week.
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