The Coke Machine - Michael Blanding [65]
Then there is disposal. Nationwide, the average container recycling rate was 33 percent in 2009, down from a high of more than 50 percent in 1992. Much of that decrease was due to the introduction of bottled water, which has doubled over the past decade to nearly 33 billion liters sold by 2008—nearly all of it in single-serving PET containers. Since bottled water containers have been recycled at notoriously low rates of less than 20 percent, the Washington, D.C.-based Container Recycling Institute concludes that these containers have brought the overall recycling rate down. Add it all up, CRI says, and that translates to some 3 billion pounds of plastic bottles in the waste stream each year. Bottled water companies, of course, dispute the notion that bottled water containers are more to blame than other products for plastic waste. According to Joe Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), PET bottles represent only a third of 1 percent (.0033) of all trash. “If you can get your head around that, it’s very clear that these efforts to target bottled water are misguided at best and totally ineffective in dealing with the problem at worst,” he says. In some ways, he has a point—what makes bottled water any worse than soda, juice, or beer, which also use plenty of water in their production and are nearly as likely to end up in the trash? And in an increasingly on-the-go society, isn’t it better for people to grab a bottle of water at the convenience store rather than a sugary soda?
That’s long been the line of the bottled water folks, who argue that bottled water isn’t competing against tap water so much as against other beverage choices, like soda. “Every day in newspapers and on TV you see stories about increasing obesity and diabetes,” says Doss. “These actions against bottled water will have no good consequences if they discourage people from drinking a healthy beverage.”
Without trashing soda, Coke makes virtually the same argument. “Consumers are making a choice of bottled water versus another beverage,” said Coke’s director of water stewardship, Greg Koch, in 2007. “Do I want a Coca-Cola? Do I want a coffee? Or is it happy hour? There’s a time and a place for bottled water, as there is for milk and juice and beer.” In a sense, it’s the same argument that the company used for years to support drinking soda—consumer choice—updated for a new beverage.
As for recycling, Doss says the IBWA has lent support to curbside recycling initiatives—adding that two-thirds of bottled water is consumed at home, at work, or in offices, places where curbside recycling is readily available. Those also happen to be places where tap water is readily available, however, contradicting the argument that bottled water is necessary as an alternative beverage “on the go.” When that discrepancy is pointed out, Doss, too, falls back on the mantra of “choice”: “It is a choice, it’s always a choice, they should have that choice, bottled water consumers are choosing to drink both and there is nothing wrong with that.”
While that argument might float to some degree, it’s hard to say Coke and its fellow companies aren’t competing against tap water when they are churning out advertisements full of mountain streams and rivers emphasizing how pure and tasty their water is—not how easy it is to grab at the 7-Eleven on the way to the gym. As bottled water has caught on, it has taken over in more and more places that tap water used to be available—and even replaced tap water entirely in many homes and offices. Just as pouring-rights contracts led to a proliferation of soft drinks in the 1990s, now water fountains have disappeared at schools, airports, and municipal buildings, which all have contracts with bottled water producers instead.
The most dramatic consequence of that shift occurred at the inauguration