I am writing this review as a little heads-up information regarding the world’s water situation. You can take it as investment advice and you can take it as fair warning.
When I researched the United Nations Year of Freshwater in 2003 for a class I was teaching, I set up a meeting with my financial advisers and directed them to buy me stock in water – quick! They did the research and reported back with surprise that Pepsi was buying up water rights like mad, so they bought me Pepsi stock.
Back then my research for my work teaching United Nations issues revealed that by the turn of the 21st century the world’s population was using 54 percent of all accessible water from rivers, lakes and underground sources. By 2025, it was estimated that we would be using 70 percent based on population growth.
With worldwide concern growing over potable water, the UN ended up creating a focus called Water for Life 2005-1015: www.un.org/waterforlifedecade. The most basic UN goal was to educate people of the world on the permeative nature of the water problem.
“Tapped” is about what I didn’t know in 2003 and what everyone needs to know now.
Everyone?
Yes, because in communities throughout the world, especially in the US and Canada, companies are moving in to take your municipal water supply, pour it in plastic bottles, and then sell it back to you at quite a nice profit. Right now Nestle, based in Switzerland, is positioning itself to buy water from a tiny, economically needy town on the Oregon side of the Columbia River (the most polluted river in America with radiation seeping though the Columbian Basin from the Hanford nuclear storage facility) called Cascade Locks.
What’s the matter with this? FDA security — supply and demand — big deal.
This is where “Tapped” embarrassed my investment portfolio. As the years pass and water accessibility becomes more acute, these companies will be able to sell back to us the water, oftentimes of questionable quality, we could have naturally had, almost for free, in the first place. Clever.
When I’ve told my friends that I’m going to be writing a review on this film about water, their eyes glaze over. “Textbook bo –ring.” But the film was produced by an Emmy-nominated film crew and top-rated, experienced producers who incorporate a dynamite soundtrack. The film is well done and important. Here is the trailer:
The water problem is not just about quantity and access. There are also issues of infrastructure and purity. A segment not in the film, but distributed on the “Tapped” Web site, involves the chemical card. Studies are showing that pharmaceuticals, among other things, are contaminating our water supply with the ability to affect genetic change.
“Tapped” is a film that has been chosen by Peace and Justice groups nationwide to show at churches and in homes to inform people of the dangers to our most basic survival commodity. The “Tapped” film and Web site also present many things we can do to fight many of the problems associated with the water story.
Since there are continued fears of chemicals in the plastic water bottles leaching into the water content when the bottle gets warm, one directive is to use a different kind of container. Another problem with plastic containers is the energy it costs to make them and then the problem with their disposal. Jack Johnson sings a nice little bit in the clip below.
There are many more ways to respond positively to the water problem, presented both in the film and extensively on the film website. The first step is to become aware. See this film.
Website: www.tappedthemovie.com
Director, Producer: Stephanie Soechtig
Co-Director, Writer, Editor: Jason Lindsey
Executive Producer: Michelle and Michael Walrath
Producer: Sarah Gibson
Release Date: July 31, 2009; DVD Release Date: July 2010
Awards:
Winner best doc Eugene International Film Festival, 2009
Winner Best of Fest Colorado Environmental Film Festival, 2009
Winner Best Doc. Anchorage International Film Festival, 2009
First Indie Film Award of Excellence, 2009
. . .
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Oh wow, it really is “in the water.”
Very interesting!
Illuminating movie. Bottled water, what a great business plan. We pay for water without pollutants, or we pay for water with ingredients marketed to us as essential or desirable. Of course, none of these ingrediants needs to be in water, they are all available some other way, and always have been. But put something in a plastic bottle of tapwater, slap a label on it and market to the masses with beautiful young men and women, and somehow an industry is born. Is it an accident that “Evian” spelled backwards is “naive”?