Marketing bottled water...

So where is the real fight in the bottled water debate?

It really depends on who you ask. Pose the question to an environmentalist and the answer is clearly a battle between tap and bottled water. But if you pose the question to the industry, you get quite a different answer. The bottled water industry would not compare the two but would instead consider it a battle between bottled water and other packaged drinks, like soft drinks or juices.

This is a very important distinction to recognize and respect. Not because it's necessarily the right one (the differences between bottled and tap water are great and weigh largely in favour of tap) , but because it is a view that is held by a very influential and highly resourced group: the bottled water industry itself.

While some may go as far as to say the industry is evil, from a marketing perspective the industry is masterful. After all, they manage to convince millions of people every year to pay a few bucks each for something they could get for higher quality at less than 1/10th of a penny.

There was a time when some of the main facets of the industry's arguments encompassed the advantages of bottled water over tap, citing convenience, taste, quality and, most of all, safety (I would imagine Walkerton boosted the sales of bottled water significantly). But as more and more reports and studies came out chastising the industry's activities related to bottled water, the industry has seemingly taken a step towards comparing itself not with tap water, but with other soft drinks and packaged beverages.

The reasoning behind this is fairly straightforward: bottled water looks better than the rest of the packaged beverages. It is marketed as a healthy alternative to traditionally sugar-filled and caffeinated drinks like Coke and Pepsi, which certainly hits consumers. An industry-wide push to recycle and use better shaped bottles has led to bottled water having better "environmental performance" (depending on your definition) than its competitors in the soft drinks industry.

Recognizing this argument is incredibly important. I first strongly encountered it when dealing with a municipality in Ontario that is considering banning the sale of bottled water in public buildings. One of the nation's biggest suppliers of bottled water was adamantly opposed to the potential ban and in its communication with the municipality it never once compared itself to tap water. The entire argument was based on how much of a great alternative it is to Coke, Pepsi and the like and how they really encourage recycling.

By changing the nature of the argument, the industry is able to effectively argue against anyone trying to do something about them, especially 'tap water advocates'. Rather than trying to counter them, the industry simply ignores them, which is far more lethal since tap water just gets left out of the conversation.

If people want to really promote tap water and discourage bottled water, the nature of the conversation with industry needs to be changed. Environmentalists and policymakers discussing tap water amongst themselves is only so effective when the dialogue switches gears when you actually talk to industry.

So just be aware.