Pepsi, Nestle Struggling with Bottled Water Sales in Canada

The bottled water industry is an interesting case study in public persuasion. Though Canada provides among the safest public drinking water in the world, a recent Statistics Canada report says at least a third of Canadian households rely on bottled water to meet their hydration needs. 

When North Americans began questioning the promotion of sugary drinks in schools a few years ago, the beverage industry stocked school vending machines with bottled water and aggressively marketed bottled water to children and parents. In the end, corporations got a better deal out of bottled water, particularly corporations like Coca-Cola and Pepsi that profit from packaging and selling municipally treated water.

Through careful and strategic marketing campaigns, the industry has convinced Canadians to pay up to 3,000 times what they pay for high-quality water from their taps for bottled water. But recent developments indicate that the tide may be turning against an industry that has grown exponentially over the past decade.

They meet this week in Halifax.

The Canadian Bottled Water Association (CBWA) is holding its annual convention in Halifax this week under the banner "the challenge of change." What they mean by change is the reality of an environmentally and socially conscious public.

The industry is grappling with the growing movement around the world to boycott bottled water and ban it in public spaces. At the CBWA convention, communications specialists are scheduled to help the industry develop strategies to save their markets from bottled water bans.

Starting with Charlottetown in April 2007, 39 municipalities have passed bans to restrict the sale of bottled water in municipal facilities in the last two years.

The bans and boycotts of bottled water are here to stay because they are fundamental to the way we view ourselves as a society. The movement against bottled water is about building a world where water is a public resource and a human right, a world where everyone has access to adequate supplies of drinking water regardless of their ability to pay and a world where communities retain control of their drinking water supplies and services.