In some places local communities are also dependent on bottled water because their tap water isn't safely drinkable ... and it's not rare for Coca-Cola to own one of the major bottled water brands, as well as Coca-Cola being a popular drink itself. Everything I just described is true in Mexico for example.
I don't know if someone already mentioned this, but a big factor is that a bottle of soda costs the same as a bottle of water, and some times even less. It's absurd, because soft drinks are made of water, so water must be cheaper! Unfortunately, soft drink companies try to corner the bottled water market so it doesn't undermine their sales.
I strongly suspect this has more to do with bottle water being overpriced (you're paying for convenience). Also, who cares that coca cola is cheaper? Why is that "bad for humanity?"
You have to hand it to the bottled water companies. They pulled off what must be one of the biggest cons in the world. First world countries with potable tap water buying it in bottles with inflated prices because of reasons.
The bottled water is produced close to where it's sold. The issue is in countries where the water bottling plant takes up lots of the available local water so the poorer citizens can't access it, and they can't afford the bottled water either. This means they don't have access to any clean water.
One of Nestle's recent CEOs actually went on record to say say he didn't believe access to clean water should be a human right.
Coca-cola has started buying all the bottled water brands in Mexico to stave off any people who won't drink soda. Tap water is dangerous to drink in most of Latin America.
"Soda companies" are already moving to controlling water supply in many countries. In Brazil, it's already hard to find in some stores water which is not owned by either Coca-Cola or Nestlé.
Bottled water, though, is often absurdly centralized. Dasani bottles might get filled at a relatively nearby Coca-Cola bottling plant, but Fiji's water really does come from Fiji. Despite the outsize logistics costs associated with doing so, the company still manages to make money selling it for only a couple bucks a bottle.
Arguably the reason they bottle the water is because of the cheap concessions. Without those, their profit margins are a lot slimmer and maybe the industry is much smaller, leaving more water out of bottles.
I routinely see a plastic bottle of water costing 1.5x more than a glass bottle of fine lemonade at the same shop.
It goes like this: people drink a lot of bottled water -> big market -> two big bottled water brand nuke the marker with advertising -> shops begin to carry branded bottled water and drop unbranded bottled water, which costs 2x more -> a lot of people buy a half liter of advertising daily.
The problem is:
They siphon money from peoples' pockets to the advertisers.
They spend those to increase the level of noise.
And I believe the water quality is dismal, i.e. it's the same tap water and much worse than reverse osmosis filtered water from my tap filter.
I think it should actually be regulated and illegal.
Then we'll get less noisy adds in our lives and two times cheaper bottled water from a variety of vendors, with its quality up.
reply