Reporter: Charles Wooley
Producer: Julia Timms
Sometimes you've got to admire their sheer audacity.
Talk about selling ice to eskimos.
We’re referring to those cunning folk flogging us all that bottled water.
Think about it. You can get perfectly healthy stuff straight from the tap for almost nothing, yet millions of Australians are forking out more than $3 a litre for the bottled variety, double the price of petrol.
Apparently, we spent more than half a billion dollars on bottled water last year.
The question is, just what do we think we're buying in those fancy bottles?
Story Contacts:
For more information about the campaign against bottled water check out environmentalist Jon Dee's website:
www.dosomething.net.au
Full transcript:
INTRODUCTION - CHARLES WOOLEY: Sometimes you've got to admire their sheer audacity. Talk about selling ice to eskimos. I'm referring to those cunning folk flogging us all that bottled water. Think about it - you can get perfectly healthy stuff straight from the tap for almost nothing, yet suckers like you and me are forking out more than $3 a litre for the bottled variety, double the price of petrol. Apparently, we spent more than half a billion dollars on bottled water last year. The question is, just what do we think we're buying in those fancy bottles?
STORY - CHARLES WOOLEY: The search for the most expensive bottled water on the planet takes us to the most wild and remote of places. As far from the madding crowd as you can get. King Island in Bass Strait. Set in the teeth of the roaring 40s on their unceasing and uninterrupted passage around the world. Now people who don't know the island wouldn't know this but this is where they make wind and rain isn't it.
DUNCAN MCFIE: That's our production factory right there. The furthest point is South America 11,000km away.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Duncan McFie is a rain farmer. It's a very simple business if you've got a head for heights. He collects water straight from the sky onto this very basic roof and calls it 'Cloud Juice'. All done by nature and gravity. Let's see the product.
DUNCAN MCFIE: There's the gold.
CHARLES WOOLEY: We'll be rich. It's a gusher. It's lovely. Producing only 400 bottles a day it looks like just a little bottler of a business. But this King Island rain water is being shipped to some of the smartest restaurants and shops in Europe and America where it sells for an astonishing $24 a bottle. It's one thing to expect people to pay $2.50 for a bottle of water, quite another to pay something like $24.
DUNCAN MCFIE: Well the places that we're $20 - $25 a bottle are where you're going to spend $200 - $300 on a meal and $50, $100, $200 on a bottle of wine so I think in comparison to that it's fine.
CHARLES WOOLEY: So it's for another economy, it's for the rich?
DUNCAN MCFIE: Absolutely, or for someone that wants to have one night of decadence.
CHARLES WOOLEY: It's far more expensive than petrol but bottled water is not just for the well to do. Australians are guzzling the stuff spending over half a billion dollars every year. And ridiculously, most of it comes from giant factories in our major cities. So it does beg the question - don't you think you are a bit of a mug, really?
JULIE KENNAN: I probably am.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Julie Kennan, Ashley Forwood and Sarah Roach are friends who work up a lather in their North Shore Sydney gym. They replace all that perspiration with their own favourite tipple bought straight from the fridge.
ASHLEY FORWOOD: I enjoy bottled water. I enjoy the convenience I enjoy the fact that it comes out of the fridge cold.
CHARLES WOOLEY: What is your bottled water of choice?
JULIE KENNAN: Mount Franklin.
CHARLES WOOLEY: What do you know Mount Franklin, where is it?
JULIE KENNAN: Tasmania?
CHARLES WOOLEY: No, it's in Victoria
JULIE KENNAN: Is it?
CHARLES WOOLEY: What is your favourite water?
ASHLEY FORWOOD: Pump,
CHARLES WOOLEY: And do you know where that comes from?
ASHLEY FORWOOD: I have no idea.
JULIE KENNAN: I drink water also because I feel it is safer than tap water, the bottled water.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Why do you think it would be safer?
JULIE KENNAN: Just because of all the bugs over the years that have been in the water.
CHARLES WOOLEY: I don't know it might be just a matter of perception but the heart of the whole argument is a public belief that somehow or other bottled water is purer and somehow safer than this water I just poured from a tap. Now, it is true that tap water does contain a number of chemicals - hydrogen peroxide, fluoride and chlorine. But then again, neither is bottled water crystal clear as we found when we tested it in the lab. Some bottled water turned out to be simply filtered tap water. Others contain extremely high amounts of bacteria. And two leading brands we tested were found to be tainted with chemical disinfectants and aluminium. So, if bottled water is not demonstrably purer and safer than tap water why do we spend so much money on it? Maybe we've just bought into the very slick, very clever advertising campaigns.
JON DEE: When bottled water first came out, I remember looking in a shop and thought, "You have got to be kidding. "They're trying to sell me bottled water? "I can get that for nothing out of my tap."
CHARLES WOOLEY: Jon Dee, founder of the environmental campaign group Planet Ark, believes we've fallen for one of the biggest marketing scams of all time.
JON DEE: For Australians, of all people in the world, to be spending half a billion dollars buying 600 million litres of bottled water every year, it makes no sense. The simple fact is we've been conned by the bottled water industry and they're laughing all the way to the bank.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Are we really that stupid when we have one of the world's purest water supplies on tap? Most of our reservoirs are so clean, Jon's more than happy to drink the water even before its treated.
JON DEE: That is just straight from here and look how clean it is, it's fantastic.
CHARLES WOOLEY: I've looked into this before and came to the conclusion that in fact we refine our water and purify it in Australia way beyond the requirements of even the most sensitive human gut.
JON DEE: Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you look at the guidelines that go into purifying this water to get it down into your tap, it's world's best practice.
CHARLES WOOLEY: But the water story gets even more bemusing.
MARTIN CHALK: Here we are, here's some peach flower tea tree.
CHARLES WOOLEY: I'm in the wilds of the NSW bush with bottling baron Martin Chalk, owner of Balance Water. And this is the source for his biggest seller - women's water. Yes, you heard it - water especially designed for women.
MARTIN CHALK: This is one of the ones we use in our 'Balance for Women'. It's a beautiful, gentle little flower.
CHARLES WOOLEY: So this is the plant for the water for women? This is women's business. I feel uneasy even being here. By adding native flowers to the mix, Martin also manages to flog water for kids, water for travellers and even water to calm you down. What will this do for me?
MARTIN CHALK: It will help with calming you, de-stressing, emotional stability, you won't stew and ruminate over issues as much.
CHARLES WOOLEY: I have had a litre of it and it's not making me any less sceptical.
NICK RYAN: Well, I was going to say Charles I thought the wine industry had the mortgage on (bleep) but it looks like the water people have got us covered on that one.
CHARLES WOOLEY: It's clear water is no longer just water any more. In Australia alone, were faced with a bewildering choice of more than 1,000 brands. So we asked one of the most discerning palates in the country, wine taster Nick Ryan, if any of them are worth their often exorbitant price tag. Shall we start with the Pellegrino?
NICK RYAN: Why not.
CHARLES WOOLEY: San Pellegrino. My notes tell me it is brilliant, lacking in any distracting colour with a fairly dense perlage of reasonably fine bubbles in abundance. This is gathered, harvested rain water.
NICK RYAN: This seems a little finer to me. That seems a little fuller on the palate, but this seems to have a little sort of sharpness and fineness through it, a real crispness.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Now you've put that idea into my head I can taste it.
NICK RYAN: Yes it's all about the power of suggestion Charles, power of suggestion. Whether you want to go out and be paying $8 - $10 a bottle when you could get a half decent bottle of wine for that sort of money, I think I'd know where I want to put my money and I'd stick to the tap.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Taste and expense aside, there's another very big question mark over bottled water. Producing, shipping and storing of those millions of plastic bottles creates one giant carbon footprint.
JON DEE: Every time we are buying bottled water no matter what the myth or the story that's attached to it, the fact is, there is a major environmental impact associated with that bottled water.
CHARLES WOOLEY: And 70% of the bottles we drink each year, weighing a massive 75,000 tonnes, end up in land fill. There you have clear illustration of the relative price in water and petrol, hey?
JON DEE: Absolutely.
CHARLES WOOLEY: And here's something equally as silly because for every product you make you need some oil, don't you. But how much oil is the question. You demonstrate it. Hold that up, tell me when I decant enough oil into this to be the amount of oil required to make one bottle of water.
JON DEE: Keep going.
CHARLES WOOLEY: More? Oh, you're joking.
JON DEE: No, more.
CHARLES WOOLEY: I would have thought it would have covered the bottom.
JON DEE: OK, stop there.
CHARLES WOOLEY: That much oil to put that much water in the same bottle. Jon Dee says the simple solution to such a wanton waste of energy is to take tap water back to the people. He champions the return of the old-fashioned bubbler delivering tap water - filtered and free. How much will the water bottlers hate this?
JON DEE: I don't think they would like it, somehow, because every time people are using these it is less bottled water they are buying and we estimate the bubblers in this corso will stop the useage of 200,000 bottles of water every single year.
CHARLES WOOLEY: This is fine by me. would you like to do a taste test Dr Dee?
JON DEE: Now, that's just perfect.
CHARLES WOOLEY: And when given the choice, even the the most hardened of bottled water addicts can be won over. This is filtered tap water freely available in your gym. You don't need to pay for it, try that?
JULIE KENNAN: I actually prefer the taste of this one.
SARAH ROACH: It tastes different but it's just as good. I should probably be just using the tap water.
CHARLES WOOLEY: So are you finally all cured of this addiction to bottled water?
JULIE KENNAN: Yes, thank your Charles.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Yes, thank you Charles you have changed our lives.
JULIE KENNAN: We will save a fortune.
CHARLES WOOLEY: But, it seems tap water campaigners still have a long way to go to match the marketing genius of the bottled water industry. We could go on all day but this is actually, it doesn't say it's for us, it's enhanced water for animals. Somehow they've even got us lapping up water for the doggie bowl at $4/bottle. Does you animal get scared in storms, distressed when you leave and get frightened around strangers, show aggressive behaviour etc etc. Calm is a premium spring water with gently infused Australian flower essences. This one should take the bark out of you.
NICK RYAN: Oh, really. Smells like one of them cocked its leg over it.
CHARLES WOOLEY: It is a bit doggy, isn't it.
JON DEE: At the end of the day it's all marketing, it's all PR it's all spin and its aim is to extract money out of your pocket and to basically maximise profits out of your gullibility and that's one thing Australians need to look at, is stop being gullible when it comes to bottled water. You have great tap water drink it.
