Private control of water....

FLOW: For Love of Water is a new documentary that takes on the global water crisis. (FLOW stands for “For Love of Water.”)

http://www.agreenerindiana.com/video/flow-for-love-of-water

The movie looks at the real costs of bottled water (and the disclosure that a good portion of bottled water is nothing more than TAP WATER).... and how the public access to water is being controlled more and more by private-for-profit companies like Coke and Pepsi.

Ity is more than well worth watching - and showing your students too!

Excerpts from the interview about the movie:
"IRENA SALINA: FLOW. FLOW is a journey. .... “Who owns water?” .... is water going to be the next oil of the twenty-first century? ..... I ... started exploring pollution, the have and the have-not, who owns water around the world, and as well as what I called transparent pollution, which is things in our water that we absolutely have no idea about it, ....."

"MAUDE BARLOW: ...at the recent Olympics ... in China. Coca-Cola was one of the official sponsors, and you couldn’t bring water, even your own bottled water, in. You had to only—you could only get Coca-Cola water. I would love to know how many bottles of Coke water were thrown away and to add to the pollution in China.

You know, this is part of what I call the movement towards creating a global cartel of water, kind of like we have a global cartel of energy, where, you know, the day may come ... that every drop of water will be spoken for privately by a corporation, whether it’s bottled water, utilities, you know, the service of, delivery of your water, recycling, desalination ... At every phase, water will be corporately owned, because we are a planet running out of fresh, clean water, ....

And if we don’t understand this really soon, we’re going to find that corporations understand it much better than we do. They’re moving in to take control of water. .... Bottled water is where they’re both [Coke and Pepsi] making money now, because there’s a real move by parents in schools against sugar water—you know, pop—and so, they’re saying, OK, well, then the new beverage of choice is bottled water. .... Last year, we put something like 50 billion gallons of water in plastic bottles around the world. Almost all of it, all but about five percent, did not get recycled around the world. ...

...first of all, it’s the corporate takeover of water, and it makes people think that what comes out of their tap doesn’t matter. So you’re not going to be prepared to keep your taxes going for infrastructure repair. And that’s the most important thing, is clean, accessible, safe public water.

Secondly, it’s polluting. Massive amounts of plastic, massive amounts of energy used in the creation and transportation of bottled water, CO2 emissions. And it’s also quite poisonous. I mean, the plastic itself leaks chemicals. People say to me, “Well, I got a great deal at Wal-Mart on my water.” “Why do you think you got a great deal? It’s been sitting there for six months. You should not be drinking it.” ... it’s unregulated. And it’s less safe than your good, clean, safe tap water, which is what needs to be the goal here."