By Alex Moore

Last Tuesday, the Progressive Students Union and Students for a Greener Hofstra put students to the test in the Student Center Atrium with the Tap Water Challenge.

The challenge was to put Deer Mountain (product of Nestlé) and Dasani (product of Coke) to the challenge against good ole’ University tap water-free to anyone on campus who has access to a faucet-that had been filtered through Brita or PUR filters.

The challenge was brought to the University by members of PSU and SGH to educate students on the bottled water industry and to encourage them to “think outside the bottle.” The idea was taken from Corporate Accountability International’s “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign, which cites bottled water as the most visible example of increasing corporate control of our water. By encouraging consumers to “think outside the bottle,” the campaign is a direct challenge to the marketing muscle and myths of the bottled water industry.

Half of all Americans drink bottled water, and one in six Americans drink only bottled water. Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Pepsi water brands account for over half of the $10 billion U.S. bottled water market, and Coke and Pepsi both use tap water as their source.

“Many people do not realize that the most popular bottled waters in the U.S. come from the tap and are resold to the public at hundreds or thousands of times the cost,” said a volunteer with Corporate Accountability International. “At the same time, corporations like Coke, Nestlé and Pepsi promote bottled water as pure, safe, healthy and superior to tap water, but bottled water is actually less regulated than tap water.”

In 2004, half a million bottles of Coke’s Dasani were recalled in the United Kingdom after they were found to contain bromate, a carcinogen. And a Natural Resources Defense Council study found that bottled water was no safer-and sometimes less safe-than tap water, with harmful contaminants like arsenic detected in some brands.

The University’s Tap Water Challenge is all the proof we need of the fallacy of the statement “bottled water is better than tap water.” Over 70 percent of students could not tell the different between tap and bottled water (and many of those who did guess right did just that: guess.). Just as many could not differentiate between Dasani and Deer Mountain.

“This is about much more than price gouging or duping the public. Our human right to water is at stake,” said Corporate Accountability International Executive Director Kathryn Mulvey. “Problems of water scarcity and access loom larger as a profit-driven industry increasingly controls our water supply.”

Companies such as Coke are draining massive amounts of water out of the third world to bottle and sell to us here in developed worlds-where our local tap water is already regulated and clean-and drying up or contaminating the wells of the local people. “Spring water mining and pumping operations are hugely profitable in a very thirsty world. The privatization of water for profit and the diversion of water are not meaningful remedies for the world’s serious problems of water pollution and water misuse grievously afflicting the poor,” said Don Roy, political science professor and board member of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation.

According to the United Nations, two-thirds of the world’s people won’t have access to enough water by 2025. In the face of limited water supply, corporations are increasingly seeking to turn water into a profit-driven commodity. Supplying water is already a $400 billion annual business-30 percent larger than the pharmaceutical industry.

This is not only affecting relatively helpless communities in developing countries far away. Nestlé began pumping water in Michigan for free to bottle, drying up and causing substantial harm to a stream, two lakes and rich diverse wetlands.

If we continue to buy bottled water and not use our local tap water, we are not only supporting the exploitation of the communities from which much of this water comes, we are sending the message to our local governments that money spent on maintaining local water quality is money wasted. Not as many drinking fountains will be available in public spaces. Local water regulations may be dropped from budgets. By purchasing only bottled water now, we may be condemning ourselves to having bottled water as our only option in the future.

Let’s remember the environment as well. Aside from the human injustice, support of the bottled water industry is support of serious environmental injustice. Imagine filling your water bottle a quarter of the way with crude oil: thick, dark crude oil. It took that much crude oil for this bottle of water to arrive onto your grocer’s shelves. Eight out of 10 water bottles end up in landfills in the United States and are not recycled. If you take into account that Americans use an average of 8.8 billion gallons of bottled water each year (66.7 billion average half-liter bottles), that is a sizable addition to our landfills.

As a nation, last November we came together to vote a new president into office. But we need to realize that once every four years is not the only time we vote in a democracy. We cast a vote with every purchase we make, whether it is in purchasing food, clothes or water. Let’s cast our vote on water together: buy yourself a nice water filter to keep in your room and a reusable water bottle to carry with you every day. You will save yourself money, and with each bottle of water that you do not buy, you will be casting a vote for a sustainable future.

Most facts and figures provided by Corporate Accountability International, Tap Water Challenge Organizing Kit. To learn more about Corporate Accountability’s campaigns, visit www.stopcorporateabuse.org