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Mindfully.org
note: A couple informative articles to read: Water quality continues to sink as laws are scoffed; left unenforced; and rescinded by the Bush gang. |
NEW YORK — The label on Aquafina water bottles will soon be changed to spell out that the drink comes from the same source as tap water, the brand's owner PepsiCo said Friday.
A group called Corporate Accountability International has been pressuring bottled water sellers to curb what it calls misleading marketing practices.
Aquafina is the single biggest bottled water brand, and its bottles are now labeled "P.W.S." The new labels will spell out "public water source."
"If this helps clarify the fact that the water originates from public sources, then it's a reasonable thing to do," PepsiCo spokeswoman Michelle Naughton said Friday.
The corporate accountability group is also pressing for similar concessions from The Coca-Cola Co., which owns the Dasani water brand, and Nestle Waters North America, seller of Nestle Pure Life purified drinking water, which gets some of its water from municipal sources.
Dasani's Web site says that Dasani comes from local water supplies and is then filtered.
"We don't believe that consumers are confused about the source of Dasani water," Coca-Cola spokeswoman Diana Garza Ciarlante said. "The label clearly states that it is purified water."
Sales of bottled water has been a growing source of revenue for companies such as PepsiCo Inc., based in Purchase, N.Y., and Atlanta-based Coca-Cola as they lessen their dependence on sales of traditional carbonated sodas, as consumer concern over health issues has weakened demand.
Nestle said Friday it has been printing new labels for its Pure Life water that say whether the water comes from municipal supplies or ground water, and the labels will begin showing up later this year. Pure Life is the only Nestle bottled water that uses public water sources and the company did not have an estimate for how much of its supply originates from the tap.
Wholesale sales of bottled water grew to $11 billion in 2006, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp., and the industry is expected to maintain growth rates of about 10 percent. The fastest growing segment of the industry is sales of bottles of less than 1.5 liters, which includes the individual serving sizes sold in many convenience and grocery stores.
The decisions by Nestle and PepsiCo come as criticism grows over environmental concerns about the industry's use of local water sources as well as consumption of resin and energy to package and ship the bottles.
Last month alone, a barrage of news hit the industry: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom banned city-funded purchases of bottled water; New York City launched an ad campaign called "Get Your Fill" to promote the benefits of tap water; and the U.S. Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution to bring attention to the importance of public water systems and the negative impact of bottled water.
"I think it's unfortunate we have gotten into this tap water vs. bottled water debate," the chief executive of the International Bottled Water Association, Joe Doss, said. "I do not think consumers are uniformly replacing tap water with bottled water."
PepsiCo shares fell 55 cents to $66.29 in afternoon trading Friday amid a broad market pullback.
source: 30jul2007
NEW YORK (CNN) — Pepsi-Cola announced Friday that the labels of its Aquafina brand bottled water will be changed to make it clear the product is tap water.
The new bottles will say, "The Aquafina in this bottle is purified water that originates from a public water source," or something similar, Pepsi-Cola North America spokeswoman Nicole Bradley told CNN.
The bottles are currently labeled: "Bottled at the source P.W.S." Americans spent about $2.17 billion on Aquafina last year, according to Beverage Digest, an independent company that tracks the global beverage industry. The U.S. bottled water business in 2006 totaled roughly $15 billion, it said.
No timetable was available for when customers will see the label change on store shelves, another Pepsi spokeswoman, Michelle Naughton, told CNN.
Pepsi released a statement saying: "If this helps clarify the fact that the water originates from public sources, then it's a reasonable thing to do."
Coca-Cola does not have plans to change the labeling on its Dasani brand bottled water, a company spokesman told CNN, despite the fact the water also comes from a public water supply.
Dasani's U.S. sales totaled approximately $1.89 billion in 2006, according to Beverage Digest calculations.
Nestle also has announced it will be changing the bottles of its All Nestle Pure Life Purified Drinking Water to "identify the source of the water, whether it's from a municipal supply or ground-water well source."
That change "will be showing up on labels this year and is expected to be on all of these labels by the end of the first quarter of 2008," the company said in a written statement.
Nestle has not decided what the new labels will say exactly, a spokesman told CNN.
All Nestle Pure Life Purified Drinking Water sales in the U.S. totaled $1.17 billion in 2006, Beverage Digest reports, a large portion of Nestle Water North America's total U.S. sales of $3.57 billion for the year, reported by Nestle.
Corporate Accountability International - which describes its work as challenging "irresponsible and dangerous corporate actions around the world" - has been pushing for this change for months with its nationwide "Think Outside the Bottle" campaign, said spokeswoman Deborah Lapidus.
Its aim was "to challenge the marketing muscle of the bottled water corporations and to galvanize support for our public water systems around the country," she said. The campaign focused on Nestle, Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
According to a 1999 report by National Resource Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group based in Washington, "about one-fourth of bottled water is bottled tap water [and by some accounts, as much as 40 percent is derived from tap water] - sometimes with additional treatment, sometimes not."
Shares of Pepsi (down $1.18 to $65.66, Charts, Fortune 500) closed down 1.7 percent to $65.66 on the New York Stock Exchange, while shares of rival Coke (down $0.70 to $52.28, Charts, Fortune 500) closed down 1.3 percent to $52.28.
source: 30jul2007
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