Tapped: A Review

Tapped, the movie, is a film that discusses the myriad of problems with the bottled water industry. Bottled water companies have moved into communities and are depleting their groundwater at alarming rates... often paying only 6-10 cents per gallon for the water they withdraw and selling it for a huge profit. These companies rarely put any money back into the communities whose lives they are destroying, nor do they take account the impact they are making on those companies. For example, Coca Cola (Dasani) continued to use large quantities of water in Atlanta during the midst of a major drought. Local residents were asked to conserve while the bottled industry continued to take what little water was left.
The film also touches on the pollution aspect of bottled water. The production of the plastic bottles (made from a byproduct of oil) is leaving drinking water polluted and causing increased rates of cancer and birth defects in towns near refineries. Despite the fact that water bottles are recyclable, only about 20% are actually recycled, and the rest end up being thrown "away".... and a lot of that plastic that is meant for landfills actually ends up in our oceans in a gyre commonly called the garbage patch. Here, the plastics break into smaller pieces and are consumed by fish, birds and other wildlife, often with dire consequences.
These plastic bottles can also leach BPA, an endocrine disruptor that has been linked to obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart problems and more. Furthermore, bottled water is not very well regulated. In any state that produces and sells the bottled water within state boundaries, there is no external regulation and the only form of regulation on the water going into the bottles is from the companies themselves. For bottles that do cross state lines, there is ONE person at the FDA who spends PART of her time regulating all of that bottled water. What does that mean? It means that while your city tap water is likely tested 10 or more time EVERY DAY, that bottle of water your just paid $3 for likely had no regulation whatsoever. Tests from independent companies have found high levels of arsenic, mercury, and other chemicals in many samples of bottled water. Not to mention that a good portion of bottled water (like most of that bottled from Coke and Pepsi) is actually just tap water from a city municipality. So, while they pay pennies for the water, they charge you dollars.
The bottom line is this: go buy a stainless steel reusable water bottle and fill it with tap water. It is safer for you, costs less, causes a whole lot less pollution and is not destroying communities.
I have done a bit of personal research on tap water versus bottled water, and have previously blogged about the problems with bottled water several times. So, this is an issue that is quite important to me. Whenever I teach about water in my environmental studies class, I always have the students do some internet research on the impacts of bottled water and ask them to examine their personal use of this product. It always amazes me how many of my (usually poor) students use bottled water on a regular basis and how uninformed of the problems they were contributing to by consuming such large quantities. Although I personally didn't learn a lot from this film, I did think it was a great summary of the problems related to bottled water consumption and is a great introductory film on this topic. It will definitely make it into the rotation for my environmental studies course. This movie is  currently on instant view on Netflix and is definitely worth a watch. Check out the film's website to learn more.