[electronic beeping, buzzing]
[indistinct chatter]
[man] It's an acquired taste.
Remember the first time you drank some big, bold red wine as a kid?
You probably didn't like it.
[narrator] It's 2008.
This might look like a wine tasting,
but what people are actually sampling is bottled water.
As soon as you start realizing that water is not water,
you start seeing differences in water.
But it's only if you don't pay attention you think water's water.
[narrator] It's all about fancy bottles, different tastes, and mineral contents.
[man] Baby boomers are aging.
People don't do the two-martini lunches anymore,
but they still want something nice in their hand.
[narrator] Today, there's no shortage of options for the HO connoisseur.
Bottled water is everywhere.
There's glacial water,
oxygen water,
and yes, you can even buy bottled rain.
Bottled water is now the US's favorite beverage,
consumed more than any other packaged drink.
As of 2020,
around the globe,
humans drink more than 400 billion liters of bottled water per year.
That's more than gushes over Niagara Falls every day.
In the US, to drink the recommended eight glasses of water a day from a tap
costs around 66 cents a year.
The same amount of bottled water,
around $1,163 a year.
That's like paying $10,000
for a sandwich.
Much of the cost comes from making, marketing, and distributing the bottles,
more than two-thirds of which never get recycled.
[water bubbles]
[whale vocalizes]
Bottled water's sold to us as a healthier and a better-tasting alternative
to tap water,
but is it all just a sales trick pushing a product
that's essentially free?
And at what cost?
[water gurgles softly]
There's no two ways about it. We all have to drink water.
It's a life-sustaining element.
Luckily, nature provides it for free.
[man] Mathematically speaking, one inch of rainfall in the district
gives the city one week's supply of water.
[narrator] During the 1950s, in most developed countries,
when you're thirsty at home, you can drink from a dependable tap
thanks to chlorination.
So why pay for it?
In the 1960s,
bottled water from natural springs is sold in the US and Europe
as a niche health product, mainly in pharmacies.
Evian is a flat water from France
that's naturally fortified with calcium and magnesium.
The company's marketing targets mothers and babies.
Monsieur Fauche, how many of these bottles do you sell in a year?
Last year we sold 291 million bottles.
[narrator] But bottled mineral water is mostly only popular in Europe.
In the US,
the drink people prefer to buy is soda.
They're still used to getting their water for free.
But that all changes in 1976.
Bubbly French mineral water Perrier,
with their green, iconic-shaped bottles,
decides to take on America,
just as the health-food movement is taking off.
Perrier thinks they can market themselves as a zero-calorie mixer,
an alternative to sugary drinks.
And they hire marketing genius Bruce Nevins.
[horse whinnies]
He's the guy who transformed Levi jeans
from utility farm wear to a global fashion brand.
Nevins's first step?
Play on the perceived glamour of French chic.
Inherent in the product is the fact that it is imported, it is French,
and so therefore, you're gonna have a certain built-in
what you call snob appeal.
[narrator] Just before the US launch,
he flies 60 journalists to France
to visit the single source
where all Perrier bubbles out of the ground.
Then,
Nevins gets busy linking Perrier to health…
[starting gun fires]
…sponsoring marathons,
just as long-distance running takes off in America.
He even runs in one himself.
Nevins plugs Perrier
as the Earth's first soft drink.
And in the way natural fizzy water like Perrier is created,
it kind of is.
Sparkling mineral spring water begins as rain
that seeps through layers of rock formed millions of years ago.
On the way down,
it absorbs healthy minerals like calcium and magnesium.
Carbon dioxide also rises up to meet the groundwater
from volcanic magma deep underground.
Under pressure,
this gas gives the water a natural carbonation, the bubbles.
It can take thousands of years before it emerges as a natural spring.
And it's fizzy to drink right out of the ground.
Nevins's plot to conquer America works.
In three years,
he's taken Perrier sales from $600,000
to a whopping $60 million.
From its base on Lake Geneva,
French rival Evian sees Perrier's runaway success
and decides to revamp its marketing in America too.
Forget touting its nutritional benefits.
Evian switches to selling itself as a lifestyle accessory.
Clearly, they're onto something,
as total bottled-water sales in the US multiply
from more than one billion liters in 1976
to about five billion in 1985.
Evian becomes the go-to brand for celebrities.
Actor Jack Nicholson even smuggles a bottle into the Oscars in 1990.
And Evian is never far from the catwalk.
But while Evian is for fashionistas,
Perrier remains the water of choice for power dining.
[gas hisses]
At least until February 1990,
when disaster strikes.
[reporter] The bubble of Perrier's success burst in dramatic fashion.
Last Friday, Perrier shares took a sudden dive in Paris,
the day before the US announcement of benzene contamination.
[narrator] A chemical linked to cancer in animals
is found in 13 bottles of Perrier.
They're forced to remove 160 million of them from supermarket shelves.
It's one of the biggest recalls
the food and drinks industry has ever seen.
Their market share shrinks from 45%
to just 21%.
Still, bottled water remains a hot commodity.
[bottles clink]
In fact, Perrier's disaster leaves an opening for competitors like Evian
and Saratoga.
From 1985 to 1992,
total bottled-water sales in the US almost double,
reaching around ten billion liters a year.
That's enough bottles to make a pile higher than the world's tallest building
three times over.
But soda is still outselling bottled water by five to one.
By the mid-'90s,
bottled water's chief competitor, soda,
is suffering a fall from grace.
Public-health officials start citing sugary drinks
as one of the root causes of America's obesity epidemic.
[reporter] Statistics showing students swallowing 700 cans of cola a year,
carbonated companies making mega money,
while critics claiming health problems start with soda.
[narrator] Meanwhile, bottled water, seen as a healthy alternative,
continues to take off.
It's so fashionable,
Chanel even designs a bottle holder for their spring 1994 collection.
There's even bottled water for pets,
with crispy beef flavor for dogs
and tangy fish flavor for cats.
With bottled water now firmly established in the US,
Big Soda decides if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
In 1994,
PepsiCo launches Aquafina,
and Coca-Cola follows in 1999 with Dasani.
It's an entirely made-up name,
but focus groups agree it suggests purity,
relaxation, and replenishment.
There's a big difference with these newcomers though,
one they're not exactly broadcasting to the public.
They're selling something called purified water,
which uses nothing more than municipal tap water.
What makes it purified?
An industrial process
that soda companies are already familiar with
for their soft drinks.
It's called reverse osmosis and works something like this.
[tap squeaks]
Filtered tap water is forced through membranes that remove bacteria,
viruses,
and any harmful chemicals.
And carbon filters extract any chlorine.
Also filtered out?
Healthy minerals such as magnesium and calcium.
Then ozone is added to kill any remaining bacteria.
And because the process uses everyday tap water
often sourced from a local reservoir,
it's cheap.
No natural springs required.
By the late '90s,
a series of health scares over the quality of tap water in the US
send people to bottled water in droves.
[reporter] Environmentalists claim a weed killer going on corn crops
is winding up in baby formula.
The weed killer washes off crops,
gets into groundwater, and that ends up at your tap.
[narrator] Public trust in tap water takes a big hit,
though it's held to similar safety standards
as bottled water.
A lot of people are paying more money for bottled water,
and they think it's better than tap water.
[narrator] Bottled-water companies start to roll out products
that seem more nutritious,
like the first vitamin-enhanced smart water, Glaceau.
Bottled water has a cachet that tap water just can't match,
and it's convenient to carry.
In the 2000s,
the public's thirst for water in cheap, plastic bottles
just keeps growing.
And there's plenty more to supply the market,
because a lot of the water comes from reservoirs, not actual springs.
By 2001,
US bottled-water sales reach over 23 billion liters per year.
That's enough water to fill a bath for every person in the United States.
The worldwide market is worth approximately $67 billion.
By 2003,
US bottled-water sales reach 28 billion liters.
That's around 16 billion plastic bottles of water,
a pile taller than 13 Great Pyramids of Giza.
Public health messaging in the early 2000s
advises people to drink a recommended amount of water per day,
and that gives bottled water even more rocket fuel.
I at least drink one of these a day. A liter a day.
And if you can drink more than that, that would be great,
especially in this heat.
[narrator] Water is liquid gold,
and everyone wants to muscle in on the business.
Trump Ice launches in 2003.
He claims it's the purest, best-tasting water imaginable.
In 2006,
Sylvester Stallone announces Sly Water,
sourced from a 10,000-year-old glacier in Mount Rainier National Park.
It's promoted as free of pollutants.
Americans are now spending
more than $11 billion every year on bottled water,
more than they spend on movie tickets.
But that same year,
Fiji Water wades into controversy.
Fiji Water launches an ad campaign promoting the purity of their water
by dissing Cleveland,
a city whose river used to be so polluted,
it repeatedly caught fire.
It's since been cleaned up.
Outraged,
Cleveland's public-utilities director orders tests of both Fiji bottled water
and Cleveland tap water.
The result?
Fiji's water, while safe, contains traces of arsenic.
Cleveland's has none.
It's a public-relations fiasco.
Cleveland, one. Fiji, zero.
Fiji is forced to pull the ads,
and the blunder is named one of CNN's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business of 2006.
Around the same time,
consumer-activist group Corporate Accountability International
goes public with accusations that some bottled waters
are misrepresenting their products.
As a result,
PepsiCo agrees to change their labels.
[woman] It has agreed to reveal the source of the water
that it uses for its Aquafina bottled water.
[narrator] From now on, their labels will spell out
"public water source."
For many,
this is brand-new information.
I could drink my own tap water for… you know, for nothing.
[narrator] And bottled water has another problem.
The public is growing more aware of the huge amount
of discarded plastic water bottles.
In 2009,
the tiny town of Bundanoon in Australia becomes the first community in the world
to ban the sale of plastic water bottles, promoting tap water as an alternative.
[man] "Bundy on Tap" went global.
It's ended up with there being a huge amount of councils and communities
getting in touch with us and saying, "You did it. Now how can we do it?"
It's about encouraging public drinking-water sources
that are highly visible and in your face.
[narrator] Cities around the world pick up on the idea.
In 2010,
Paris introduces a stylish solution to weaning people off the bottle,
sparkling water fountains.
[in French]
[narrator] The bottled-water market responds by upping its game.
[indistinct chattering, laughing]
Shops open dedicated to selling exclusive, high-end brands.
[woman] A lot of people are like, "Is this truly all water?"
They're like, "It looks like vodka. It looks like alcohol."
"The bottles are gorgeous."
I wish they would do glass bottles, so please forgive me.
[narrator] Water sommeliers help customers navigate the choice.
[sommelier] If I have a fish, a very subtle fish dish,
I don't wanna drink water
with very loud-in-your-mouth kind of firework bubbles.
But on the other hand, think about a crispy fried oyster.
Now the bubbles would work very nicely with that.
That's why I think it's important for restaurants in the future
to have water menus and water lists.
[narrator] 2016 is a milestone year.
Sales of bottled water in the US overtake soft drinks,
and it's no longer just sparkling versus still.
Now the mainstream water market is flooded with choice.
But as fast as sales rise,
the environmental crisis caused by plastic waste, including water bottles,
grows more and more urgent.
In 2018,
Americans bought 71 billion plastic water bottles.
That's enough to stack to the Moon 37 times.
And to make all those bottles requires huge amounts of energy,
enough to fuel your car for almost two million years.
The fact is
91% of all plastic isn't recycled.
So billions of bottles end up in landfills
and in the oceans,
killing marine life,
while some are broken down
and shipped as garbage to developing countries.
-[ship horn blares] -[gulls squawking]
Still, for places around the world without easy access to public water,
bottled water can be a life-saving boon.
But these same places are on the front lines of the problem
and taking steps to counter it.
In 2020,
Kenya announces a ban on single-use plastics at beaches
and in national parks, forests, and conservation areas.
Designers are coming up with creative ideas
for recycling plastic into new products.
Big bottled-water companies
have committed to use more recycled material
in their packaging.
But that's just a drop in the ocean.
A better solution is avoiding plastic entirely.
More and more people are consciously switching
to using refillable bottles.
The company Ocean Bottle also works to stop plastic entering the ocean.
New apps like Mymizu in Japan
help connect people to water fountains and eco-cafés.
But sales of bottled water are still growing,
projected to reach $400 billion by 2026.
We're at a watershed moment.
Marketing has transformed nature's free supply
into a billion-dollar industry.
And a full 50% of all bottled water starts as tap water.
So what is it we're buying exactly?
A container with a label?
A brand?
When it's fundamentally just about quenching our thirst,
think about that
the next time you pay for what you used to get for free.
[dramatic electronic music plays]