“Pop Culture in a Bottle” - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 259

Pepsi was pilloried for identifying the source of Aquaina water as “P.W.S.” ; now its la-
bels explain that means “public water source”—aka tap water.
Most controversially, the definition of springwater has been modified numerous
times. What is a spring? Technically, it is a water source that originates from under-
ground that is not directly influenced by rain or runoff. In 2003, Poland Spring faced
a class-action suit alleging its water was not springwater but “treated groundwater,” a
seeming splitting of hairs but an important legal and marketing distinction. Without
admitting fault, Nestlé agreed to settle the case with a $10 million payment to charity.
Protests against bottled water periodically flared in big cities and on college campuses,
but the movement gained national attention when Alice Waters , the celebrated chef of
Chez Panisse, a restaurant in Berkeley, CA, joined Corporate Accountability Interna-
tional's “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign, to encourage restaurants and cities to es-
chew bottled water in favor of tap. She objected to a multitude of sins: corporate owner-
ship of water resources; the use of plastic bottles; the quality of the water in bottles; the
many hidden costs of pumping, shipping, storing, and serving bottled water; and the
carbon footprint created by shipping heavy loads of water over great distances.
“Bottled water is a blight on the globe —it's a train speeding over a cliff!” she told me.
“We have to stop using up all of our resources and get of that train. I know that restaur-
ants are certainly making money on bottled water, no question. But you have to balance
these things out. For me, it's become a matter of principle.”
Chez Panisse used to serve San Pellegrino, an Italian mineral water, by the caseload.
But as of late 2007, the restaurant has used only filtered tap water, which it serves in
glass decanters. Other restaurants in the Bay Area have done the same thing. Like New
York, San Francisco has such high-quality water (from Hetch Hetchy) that it doesn't
have to filter it. Alice Waters filters all the water used at Chez Panisse “just to be sure”
and bought a machine that adds nitrogen bubbles for those who prefer their water fizzy.
When I asked what prompted her to sacrifice San Pellegrino, which was a popular
moneymaker, Waters explained that bottled water took up a lot of storage room, but the
main reason was that “San Pellegrino was bought by Nestlé. They want to portray them-
selves as 'environmentalists,' but I just cannottake Nestlé's money. They give with one
hand and take with the other.”
Kim Jefery , CEO of Nestlé Waters North America, disputed this. “I called her and
said, 'Alice, if you're attacking bottled water for its carbon footprint, how come you're
bringing all those wines from Italy? [Sonoma] has great wines close to you. Why not use
them? And if you don't want to bring water from Europe, why not use a local brand?'
” Waters, he said, replied, “Italian wine prices are just sogood, we can't notuse them.”
Jeffery harrumphed, “C'mon, man, that's not a serious response.”