In a world consumed by greed for consumption and speed, Slow Living advocates for change—small, progressive steps toward a sustainable future. Questioning the dominant narratives that widen the inequality prevalent in societies, the book shows how individual choices and small acts of resistance can, in turn create ripple effects that could restore our relationship with the planet.
3 Ways to Protect Water as a Commons
‘Water is the driver of nature.’
LEONARDO DA VINCI
SAY NO TO BOTTLED WATER
The right to water has been recognised in international law. Yet, some companies do not respect this. The chairman of the board of Nestlé, for example, once said, ‘The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution.’ By buying bottled water you support companies such as Nestlé who steal water from the public and let you pay a high price for it. Only a generation ago water was available for free. We, however, already pay INR 20–25 for one litre of bottled drinking water. One wonders how much the next generation will have to pay.
According to the Food and Drug Administration of India, 53 percent of packaged drinking water in Mumbai was found to be unfit for human consumption. In many ways, bottled water is only as regulated as tap water in India. Even in cases where
regulations exist, there are serious loopholes in implementation. In many cases, water churned out from a single source gets to be sold under different brand names. To think one brand is better than another is delusional. Most of the bottled water sold in India hardly contains any minerals. In the process of reverse osmosis (RO), most of the minerals are lost. This is the reason most bottled water bottles have ‘packaged drinking water’ and not ‘mineral water’ written on them. This water has no intrinsic value except an assurance of safety, which we know is a myth. Thanks to advertising and celebrity endorsements, we are made to believe that all water except bottled water is unsafe.
Worldwide, some 2.7 million tonnes of plastic is used to bottle water each year. Even in the US, six out of seven plastic bottles consumed are ‘downcycled’, and not recycled, meaning they end up in garbage dumps, landfills, or even worse, in the oceans. Many Indian villages have complained about depleting groundwater levels after bottled water companies began extracting water for sale in neighbourhood areas. Even in areas with proper recycling facilities in place, millions of plastic bottles end up polluting the environment. These bottles eventually enter our waterways where they break down into smaller particles but never degrade as, for example, an apple or a newspaper would. The bottles break into ever smaller particles that marine animals usually mistake for food.
It takes about 2.5 decilitres of oil to manufacture one plastic bottle of one litre capacity. This oil comes from deep down in the Earth. So first of all, you need to drill a well. Not only does this process contribute to CO2 emissions, it also disturbs the local environment. Oil must be pumped up, then the raw oil must be processed to eventually end up as one of the raw materials for producing that water bottle, which we buy and then throw away as soon as it’s empty. Isn’t it crazy how we prefer to put so much effort in manufacturing and shipping that bottle while in a lot of places you can just walk to the tap to fill your glass or bottle?
Many communities have had no option but to go to court to try and protect their groundwater from corporate water bottlers.
Extremely expensive and time-consuming, these legal battles have torn towns apart. Although some communities have banned commercial water extraction, not all towns have had such success.
According to Euromonitor International, Nestlé is globally the biggest water bottler in terms of sales, followed by Coca-Cola, Danone, and PepsiCo. Nestlé Waters, the Paris-based subsidiary, owns almost fifty brands, including Perrier, S. Pellegrino, and Poland Spring. The company, it seems, has been preparing for shortages for decades. Helmut Maucher, the former CEO of the multinational, in an interview with the New York times, said, ‘Springs are like petroleum. You can always build a chocolate factory. But springs you have or you don’t have.’ This blatant monopoly of water can be stopped if we drastically cut our use and choose to purify our water at home and carry our own water bottle when we travel.
2. COLA -FREE ZONES
Remember as you grab a can of aerated cola or soda from well-known international brands, that it takes almost three litres of water to make one litre of the beverage in question. In order to satisfy this need, the companies are increasingly taking over control of aquifers in communities around the world, robbing the fields, the ecosystem, and people of their water. Sugar, which is used in excess in these products, comes from water-guzzling crops that further increase the total amount when we calculate the amount of water needed for the production of these drinks. According to our research, Coca-Cola is the number one buyer of sugarcane in India, and Pepsi is number three. If you take into account the water used for sugarcane plantation, then we are using almost 400 litres of water to make a bottle of Coca-Cola.
In 2008, Coca-Cola conducted an assessment of a factory and found it used 35 litres of water to make every half-litre of its beverage. The researcher who worked on that assessment says the company pressured him to adopt a ‘net green’ accounting method that would have lowered the water footprint of its agricultural supply chain. Coming under pressure from local communities and
environmentalists, Coca-Cola pledged to become ‘a truly water-sustainable business on a global scale’ in 2007. Eleven years later, by the standards of the 2008 assessment, the company still has nearly 99 percent of its water footprint to go.
PepsiCo and Coke have been accused of dehydrating communities in their pursuit of water resources to feed their own plants, drying up farmers’ wells, and destroying local agriculture. The companies have also violated workers’ rights in countries such as Colombia, Turkey, Guatemala, India, and Russia. Only through their multi-million dollar marketing campaigns can the cola companies sustain the clean image they crave.
3. WATER HARVESTING AND CONSERVATION – PROTECTING THE COMMONS
The ‘Charting Our Water Future’ report by global consultancy McKinsey predicted that by ‘2030, under an average economic growth scenario and if no efficiency gains are assumed, global water requirements would grow from 4,500 billion m3 today (or 4.5 thousand cubic kilometres) to 6,900 billion m3.’ As the report states, ‘the drivers of this resource challenge are fundamentally tied to economic growth and development. Agriculture accounts for approximately 3,100 billion m3, or 71 percent of global water withdrawals today, and without efficiency gains will increase to 4,500 billion m3 by 2030 (a slight decline to 65 percent of global water withdrawals). The water challenge is therefore closely tied to food provision and trade.’ While being mindful of eating seasonal fresh food which does not rely on water-intensive chemical farming is definitely the call of the hour, proactive measures for water conservation need to also be taken both at an individual and collective level.
