Hacker Cinema
Tapped
2009 · Film · documentary · 76 min
Directed by Stephanie Soechtig, Jason Lindsey
Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right, or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce? Stephanie Soechtig's debut feature is an unflinching examination of the big business of bottled water. From the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car and I.O.U.S.A., this timely documentary is a behind-the-scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of an industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never to become a commodity: our water. From the plastic production to the ocean in which so many of these bottles end up, this inspiring documentary trails the path of the bottled water industry and the communities which were the unwitting chips on the table. A powerful portrait of the lives affected by the bottled water industry, this revelatory film features those caught at the intersection of big business and the public's right to water.
3 positive2 neutralfrom 5 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
Was the documentary "Tapped" by chance? I saw that one around that same timeframe you mentioned and it inspired me to get a reusable bottle I still use to this day.
I agree wholesale with you but would like to point out that in "capitalism" prices for raw materials are often so cheap as to be called free not only in lawless shithole countries (see the films "Tapped" or "Gasland" concerning shale and bottled waterwater industry), even fines for polluting are often a slap on the wrist for hugely rich corporations (who are too big to fail ...) Swiss billionaire Stephen Schmidheiny is a rare example of someone being held accountable... But more to the point "The Corporation" makes the case that it's because a change in the law during the civil war let businesses have the same rights as citizens that such oversight occurs..they have more resources than individuals and often cause speculative havoc (ie buying up properties to make a Airbnb empire)
I understand your emotion and living in Romania I see the abandoned conglomerates and am glad that period is over...however if you discount the risk of chernobilian disaster (sea of Azov etc) that the lack of media and public accountability made possible I'd wager that capitalistic societies is powers of magnitude more polluting simply because people live behind paid layers (producer->wholesalers->distributors->retailers->consumer) paying for it by living in cities, working for buisnesses serving other buisness etc) Manufactured boredom (from living in cities) ->Advertising->fashion/fads->brands-> excess packaging is also a thing and part of the problem... Then there is the fact that businesses once created to solve a problem in the most efficient way often self perpetuate and bloat with govt closing their eyes to monopolistic behaviour in the name of customer pricing
In the city I live in, you can buy food from people from the countryside, rent/property is still cheap , so if you live simply you hardly have expenses and can avoid wasting your life working away while hardly seeing your kids grow up... I understand you lived in a failed system but you shouldn't throw away the baby with the bathwater, authenticity counts, real food counts, generosity and food that is less processed or sprayed (because cost) counts
I feel having grown up in a WIERD (acronym) people there forget that the apparent sophistication is just a sheen and like the 300ml plastic bottles they constantly consume they are choking the rest of us on their garbage (ie the developed world using x times more than the rest)
I think you can see where I'm going with this...the problem with capitalism atm or the way government treats it is that it inherently needs growth, whereas the planet needs "decroissance" a french word for "ungrowth" a french politician, (Yves Cochet )I think, said something like our economy has to "ungrow" 10% per year , it's possible even without covid, but it certainly needs a whole new mindset or a drastic realisation that droughts are going to get much much worse...
Tap water in the developed world is really really good. You can measure a country by the ability of that nation to provide clean water to people. Municipal water supplies in cities like Atlanta and Cincinnati are often tested 200~300 times per month at several pumping and maintenance locations. Bottled water is a scam, and it also is a resources that's often extracted from poor countries and communities.
The documentary Tapped and Blue Gold both go into all the screwed up thing the bottle water industry does. For countries without clean water, bottled water is not the solution. Better municipal water, more wells and cheaper, low energy water purification around those wells is a much more sustainable solution.
> put water into cans
People need to stop buying packaged water. Municipal water in developed countries is always cleaner than bottled water. There are very low standards for bottled water where as city water in the US, EU, Japan et. al. are tested constantly (in some cities; up to 400 times per month at various sites and sections).
Bottled water is at 1000% markup compared city/water fountains. It is also almost always tap water. It's a plight on the world in plastic/oil waste and people need to stop buying it. Putting it in cans will not make it better, and countries without clean water need heavily to invest in better domestic clean water infrastructure. It should be the highest priority of ever low income country to provide this most basic need to its people.
The documentaries Blue Gold and Tapped go into the issues with the private and bottled water industries.
Bottled water is a scam. It's less regulated than municipal tap water in most developed nations, companies suck up water from small towns and use tons of fuel to ship it out of those watersheds and then charge people 1000% markup.
For countries without clean water, the effort should be put into getting municipal water supplies.
Don't buy plastic disposable water bottles if you live in a developed nation. They prop up a terrible industry, generate tons of waste, use tons of oil and it's less clean than just drinking from a water fountain.
Edit: the documentary Tapped is a great film about the bottled water industry, and Blue Gold is a good one about the water industry in general.
For anyone new to this topic I recommend watching Tapped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzntuXdE8dY
Interesting to see this brought up again by Businessweek but this is far from news – Nestlé and PepsiCo were featured in the 2009 documentary Tapped, which came to many of the same conclusions, and brought up other potential health issues with bottled water, such as the use Bisphenol-A (BPA) in bottle plastics.