WEBVTT 00:00:07.988 --> 00:00:10.391 This is a story about a world obsessed with stuff. 00:00:10.391 --> 00:00:13.749 It's a story about a system in crisis. 00:00:13.749 --> 00:00:15.232 We are trashing the planet. 00:00:15.232 --> 00:00:16.858 We are trashing each other. 00:00:16.858 --> 00:00:19.584 And we are not even having fun. 00:00:19.584 --> 00:00:20.712 The good thing is 00:00:20.712 --> 00:00:22.245 when we start to understand the system, 00:00:22.245 --> 00:00:24.845 we start to see lots of places to step in 00:00:24.845 --> 00:00:28.509 and turn these problems into solutions. 00:00:36.878 --> 00:00:39.335 One of the problems with trying to use less stuff 00:00:39.335 --> 00:00:41.796 is that sometimes we feel like we really need it. 00:00:41.796 --> 00:00:44.166 What if you live in a city like, say, Cleveland 00:00:44.166 --> 00:00:45.436 and you want a glass of water? 00:00:45.436 --> 00:00:46.549 Are you going to take your chances and 00:00:46.549 --> 00:00:48.098 get it from the city tap? 00:00:48.098 --> 00:00:49.847 Or should you reach for a bottle of water 00:00:49.847 --> 00:00:53.220 that comes from the pristine rainforests of… Fiji? 00:00:53.220 --> 00:00:53.949 Well, Fiji brand water 00:00:53.949 --> 00:00:56.517 thought the answer to this question was obvious. 00:00:56.517 --> 00:00:59.164 So they built a whole ad campaign around it. 00:00:59.164 --> 00:01:00.976 It turned out to be one of the dumbest moves 00:01:00.976 --> 00:01:02.415 in advertising history. 00:01:02.415 --> 00:01:03.483 You see, the city of Cleveland 00:01:03.483 --> 00:01:05.341 didn’t like being the butt of Fiji’s jokes, 00:01:05.341 --> 00:01:07.756 so they did some tests and guess what? 00:01:07.756 --> 00:01:08.639 These tests showed 00:01:08.639 --> 00:01:11.332 a glass of Fiji water is lower quality, 00:01:11.332 --> 00:01:14.397 it loses taste tests against Cleveland tap 00:01:14.397 --> 00:01:17.648 and costs thousands of times more. 00:01:17.648 --> 00:01:19.320 This story is typical of what happens 00:01:19.320 --> 00:01:21.316 when you test bottled water against tap water. 00:01:21.316 --> 00:01:22.431 Is it cleaner? 00:01:22.431 --> 00:01:24.242 Sometimes, sometimes not. 00:01:24.242 --> 00:01:25.264 In many ways, 00:01:25.264 --> 00:01:28.189 bottled water is less regulated than tap. 00:01:28.189 --> 00:01:29.536 Is it tastier? 00:01:29.536 --> 00:01:30.914 In taste tests across the country, 00:01:30.914 --> 00:01:34.412 people consistently choose tap over bottled water. 00:01:34.412 --> 00:01:35.852 These bottled water companies say 00:01:35.852 --> 00:01:37.570 they are just meeting consumer demand. 00:01:37.570 --> 00:01:39.799 But who would demand a less sustainable, 00:01:39.799 --> 00:01:43.189 less tasty, way more expensive product, especially 00:01:43.189 --> 00:01:46.394 one you can get almost free in your kitchen? 00:01:46.394 --> 00:01:47.045 Bottled water costs 00:01:47.045 --> 00:01:49.970 about 2000 times more than tap water. 00:01:49.970 --> 00:01:51.131 Can you imagine paying 2000 times 00:01:51.131 --> 00:01:53.081 the price of anything else? 00:01:53.081 --> 00:01:55.775 How about a $10,000 sandwich? 00:01:55.775 --> 00:01:56.703 Yet people in the US buy 00:01:56.703 --> 00:02:00.047 more than half a billion bottles of water every week. 00:02:00.047 --> 00:02:03.995 That’s enough to circle the globe more than 5 times. 00:02:03.995 --> 00:02:06.038 How did this come to be? 00:02:06.038 --> 00:02:08.871 It all goes back to how our materials economy works 00:02:08.871 --> 00:02:10.868 and one of its key drivers which is known as 00:02:10.868 --> 00:02:12.911 manufactured demand. 00:02:12.911 --> 00:02:14.629 If companies want to keep growing, 00:02:14.629 --> 00:02:17.154 they have to keep selling more and more stuff. 00:02:17.154 --> 00:02:20.341 In the 1970s giant soft drink companies got worried 00:02:20.341 --> 00:02:23.406 as they saw their growth projections starting to level off. 00:02:23.406 --> 00:02:25.728 There’s only so much soda a person can drink. 00:02:25.728 --> 00:02:28.004 Plus it wouldn’t be long before people began realizing 00:02:28.004 --> 00:02:30.651 that soda is not that healthy and turned back to 00:02:30.651 --> 00:02:33.437 "gasp", drinking tap water. 00:02:33.437 --> 00:02:34.459 Well, the companies 00:02:34.459 --> 00:02:36.920 found their next big idea in a silly designer product 00:02:36.920 --> 00:02:40.357 that most people laughed off as a passing yuppie fad. 00:02:40.357 --> 00:02:42.633 Water is free, people said back then, 00:02:42.633 --> 00:02:45.001 what will they sell us next, air? 00:02:45.001 --> 00:02:47.834 So how do you get people to buy this fringe product? 00:02:47.834 --> 00:02:50.899 Simple. You manufacture demand. 00:02:50.899 --> 00:02:52.153 How do you do that? 00:02:52.153 --> 00:02:53.083 Well. Imagine 00:02:53.083 --> 00:02:54.816 you are in charge of a bottled water company. 00:02:54.816 --> 00:02:56.690 Since people aren’t lining up to trade 00:02:56.690 --> 00:02:57.586 their hard earned money 00:02:57.586 --> 00:02:59.583 for your unnecessary product, 00:02:59.583 --> 00:03:00.699 you make them feel scared 00:03:00.699 --> 00:03:03.020 and insecure if they don’t have it. 00:03:03.020 --> 00:03:06.363 And that’s exactly what the bottled water industry did. 00:03:06.363 --> 00:03:08.159 One of their first marketing tactics was 00:03:08.159 --> 00:03:10.032 to scare people about tap water, 00:03:10.032 --> 00:03:13.515 with ads like Fiji’s Cleveland campaign. 00:03:13.515 --> 00:03:15.837 “When we’re done,” one top water executive said. 00:03:15.837 --> 00:03:20.342 “tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes.” 00:03:20.342 --> 00:03:22.494 Next, you hide the reality of your product 00:03:22.494 --> 00:03:24.864 behind images of pure fantasy. 00:03:24.864 --> 00:03:25.947 Have you ever noticed 00:03:25.947 --> 00:03:27.603 how bottled water tries to seduce us with 00:03:27.603 --> 00:03:31.116 pictures of mountains streams and pristine nature? 00:03:31.116 --> 00:03:33.176 But guess where a third of all bottled water in US 00:03:33.176 --> 00:03:35.203 actually comes from? 00:03:35.203 --> 00:03:36.921 The tap! 00:03:36.921 --> 00:03:39.105 Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coke’s Dasani are 00:03:39.105 --> 00:03:40.264 two of the many brands 00:03:40.264 --> 00:03:42.540 that are really filtered tap water, 00:03:42.540 --> 00:03:44.908 But the pristine nature lie goes much deeper. 00:03:44.908 --> 00:03:47.602 In a recent full page ad, Nestlé said: 00:03:47.602 --> 00:03:52.292 “bottled water is the most environmentally responsible consumer product in the world.” 00:03:52.292 --> 00:03:53.546 What?! 00:03:53.546 --> 00:03:54.924 They are trashing the environment 00:03:54.924 --> 00:03:56.890 all along the product’s life cycle. 00:03:56.890 --> 00:04:00.837 Exactly how is that environmentally responsible? 00:04:00.837 --> 00:04:02.154 The problems start here 00:04:02.154 --> 00:04:03.655 with extraction and production 00:04:03.655 --> 00:04:06.224 where oil is used to make water bottles. 00:04:06.224 --> 00:04:06.970 Each year, 00:04:06.970 --> 00:04:09.615 making the plastic water bottles used in the US 00:04:09.615 --> 00:04:13.515 takes enough oil and energy to fuel a million cars. 00:04:13.515 --> 00:04:16.813 All that energy spent to make the bottle 00:04:16.813 --> 00:04:19.320 even more to ship it around the planet 00:04:19.320 --> 00:04:23.825 and then we drink it in about 2 minutes? 00:04:23.825 --> 00:04:25.033 That brings us to the big problem 00:04:25.033 --> 00:04:26.565 at the other end of the life cycle. 00:04:26.565 --> 00:04:28.176 Disposal. 00:04:28.176 --> 00:04:30.870 What happens to all these bottles when we’re done? 00:04:30.870 --> 00:04:32.881 Eighty percent end up in landfills, 00:04:32.881 --> 00:04:35.296 where they will sit for thousands of years, 00:04:35.296 --> 00:04:37.153 or in incinerators, where they are burned, 00:04:37.153 --> 00:04:38.872 releasing toxic pollution. 00:04:38.872 --> 00:04:41.240 The rest gets collected for recycling. 00:04:41.240 --> 00:04:42.633 I was curious about where 00:04:42.633 --> 00:04:45.280 the plastic bottles that I put in recycling bins go. 00:04:45.280 --> 00:04:48.347 I found out that shiploads were being sent to India. 00:04:48.347 --> 00:04:49.599 So, I went there. 00:04:49.599 --> 00:04:52.571 I will never forget riding over a hill outside Madras 00:04:52.571 --> 00:04:53.872 where I came face to face 00:04:53.872 --> 00:04:56.797 with a mountain of plastic bottles from California. 00:04:56.797 --> 00:04:57.542 Real recycling 00:04:57.542 --> 00:05:01.187 would turn these bottles back into bottles. 00:05:01.187 --> 00:05:04.274 But that wasn’t what was happening here. 00:05:04.274 --> 00:05:06.689 Instead these bottles were slated to be downcycled, 00:05:06.689 --> 00:05:09.058 which means turning them into lower quality products 00:05:09.058 --> 00:05:11.240 that would just be chucked later. 00:05:11.240 --> 00:05:12.633 The parts that couldn’t be downcycled 00:05:12.633 --> 00:05:14.073 were thrown away there, 00:05:14.073 --> 00:05:15.559 shipped all the way to India 00:05:15.559 --> 00:05:18.856 just to be dumped in someone else’s backyard. 00:05:18.856 --> 00:05:19.925 If bottled water companies 00:05:19.925 --> 00:05:21.875 want to use mountains on their labels, 00:05:21.875 --> 00:05:23.070 it would be more accurate to show 00:05:23.070 --> 00:05:25.716 one of those mountains of plastic waste. 00:05:25.716 --> 00:05:29.307 Scaring us, seducing us, and misleading us 00:05:29.307 --> 00:05:30.466 these strategies are 00:05:30.466 --> 00:05:34.600 all core parts of manufacturing demand. 00:05:34.600 --> 00:05:36.225 Once they have manufactured all this demand, 00:05:36.225 --> 00:05:38.547 creating a new multibillion dollar market, 00:05:38.547 --> 00:05:41.705 they defend it by beating out the competition. 00:05:41.705 --> 00:05:43.888 But in this case, the competition is 00:05:43.888 --> 00:05:47.881 our basic human right to clean, safe drinking water. 00:05:47.881 --> 00:05:50.436 Pepsi’s Vice Chairman publicly said 00:05:50.436 --> 00:05:53.222 “The biggest enemy is tap water!” 00:05:53.222 --> 00:05:54.384 They want us to think it’s dirty 00:05:54.384 --> 00:05:57.154 and bottled water is the best alternative. 00:05:57.154 --> 00:05:59.538 In many places, public water is polluted 00:05:59.538 --> 00:06:00.420 thanks to polluting industries 00:06:00.420 --> 00:06:03.131 like the plastic bottle industry. 00:06:03.131 --> 00:06:04.523 And these bottled water guys are 00:06:04.523 --> 00:06:07.618 all too happy to offer their expensive solutions, 00:06:07.618 --> 00:06:10.204 which keeps us hooked on their product. 00:06:10.204 --> 00:06:12.372 It is time we took back the tap. 00:06:12.372 --> 00:06:14.538 That starts with making a personal commitment 00:06:14.538 --> 00:06:16.488 to not buy or drink bottled water 00:06:16.488 --> 00:06:20.064 unless the water in your community is truly unhealthy. 00:06:20.064 --> 00:06:21.504 Yes, it takes a bit of foresight 00:06:21.504 --> 00:06:23.640 to grab a reusable bottle on the way out, 00:06:23.640 --> 00:06:25.591 but I think we can handle it. 00:06:25.591 --> 00:06:27.309 Then take the next step 00:06:27.309 --> 00:06:30.142 join a campaign that’s working for real solutions. 00:06:30.142 --> 00:06:33.764 Like demanding investment in clean tap water for all. 00:06:33.764 --> 00:06:37.954 In the US, tap water is underfunded by $24 billion 00:06:37.954 --> 00:06:39.629 partly because people believe 00:06:39.629 --> 00:06:41.699 drinking water only comes from a bottle! 00:06:41.699 --> 00:06:42.891 Around the world, 00:06:42.891 --> 00:06:44.817 a billion people don’t have access to clean water 00:06:44.817 --> 00:06:46.118 right now. 00:06:46.118 --> 00:06:48.625 Yet cities all over are spending millions of dollars 00:06:48.625 --> 00:06:51.968 to deal with all the plastic bottles we throw out. 00:06:51.968 --> 00:06:53.178 What if that money was spent on 00:06:53.178 --> 00:06:54.151 improving our water systems 00:06:54.151 --> 00:06:58.052 or better yet, preventing pollution to begin with? 00:06:58.052 --> 00:06:59.616 There are many more things we can do 00:06:59.616 --> 00:07:01.117 to solve this problem. 00:07:01.117 --> 00:07:02.046 Lobby your city officials 00:07:02.046 --> 00:07:03.439 to bring back drinking fountains. 00:07:03.439 --> 00:07:05.436 Work to ban the purchase of bottled water 00:07:05.436 --> 00:07:09.151 by your school, your organization or entire city. 00:07:09.151 --> 00:07:11.705 This is a huge opportunity for millions of people 00:07:11.705 --> 00:07:14.027 to wake up and protect our wallets, 00:07:14.027 --> 00:07:16.257 our health and the planet. 00:07:16.257 --> 00:07:18.996 The good news is: it’s already started. 00:07:18.996 --> 00:07:20.483 Bottled water sales have begun to drop while 00:07:20.483 --> 00:07:23.780 business is booming for safe refillable water bottles. 00:07:23.780 --> 00:07:24.801 Yay! 00:07:24.801 --> 00:07:26.891 Restaurants are proudly serving “tap” 00:07:26.891 --> 00:07:28.284 and people are choosing to pocket 00:07:28.284 --> 00:07:29.910 the hundreds or thousands of dollars 00:07:29.910 --> 00:07:32.650 they would otherwise be wasting on bottled water. 00:07:32.650 --> 00:07:34.507 Carrying bottled water is on its way to being 00:07:34.507 --> 00:07:36.504 as cool as smoking while pregnant. 00:07:36.504 --> 00:07:39.244 We know better now. 00:07:39.244 --> 00:07:40.637 The bottled water industry is getting worried 00:07:40.637 --> 00:07:42.309 because the jig is up. 00:07:42.309 --> 00:07:43.470 We’re not buying into 00:07:43.470 --> 00:07:45.560 their manufactured demand anymore. 00:07:45.560 --> 00:07:48.346 We’ll choose our own demands, thank you very much, 00:07:48.346 --> 99:59:59.000 and we’re demanding clean safe water for all.