The great bottled water debate

To give an idea of how many bottles that is, the site says, there will be enough to stretch from San Francisco to New York. This is about 3,000 miles. That’s a lot of bottles.

Here in TT, the problem is clearly evinced by looking into any of our drains or waterways after a heavy rain.

But beside the environmental impact problem presented by all this plastic waste material, there remains the ticklish issue of the relationship between the state water provider and private sector bottlers. Are they increasingly in competition with each other? Why can bottlers charge more for what appears, ostensibly at least, to be the same product offered by the state? This discussion which has been well under way for more than a decade in the developed world has finally come to the Caribbean and were some of the topics at the Caribbean Water and Waste Water Association’s Annual Conference, where the role and responsibilities of the region’s bottled water industry was debated.

Speaking with media during a break on the conference’s second day, Dominic Hadeed, CEO of Blue Waters Products Ltd speculated that it was possible issues between state suppliers and private bottlers may arise because, as subsidised entities, they did not get a chance to raise rates in accordance with their production costs.

“Maybe the level of dissatisfaction stems, not so much from competition, but the fact that the same people who are willing to pay more for water in the bottle, will not pay more for it in the pipe. I think that this is where the municipal companies have a problem with and understandably so.” said Hadeed.

The problem was more deeply outlined by one contributor from Barbados who estimated that it cost US$1.25 to produce one litre of water versus US$0.25 to produce the same amount of pipe borne water in his own country.

In most countries around the world, providing water and sewage treatment services is largely subsidised state enterprise.

Because of the prohibitive cost of running a national water system, the private sector generally shies away this type of business.

Governments also become involved to keep the cost of water affordable and accessible to all.

However, keeping the cost of public water down means denying state enterprises much needed funds to upgrade infrastructure and continued reliance on government for subventions to support their operations.

Meanwhile, private bottlers are able to set their price.

Hadeed said this wasn’t so, and it was in fact state providers who could arbitrarily raise rates, while private bottlers were subject to the market. In order to shift more users to pipe borne, public supplies of water, the Blue Waters CEO said governments had a responsibility to educate their people about their product and market their services in the same way the private companies did.

Hadeed also said he was amazed that anyone would think private sector water bottlers were in competition with state and municipal suppliers.

“We are a customer of theirs. I am not sure why they see us as a threat. A competitor is someone who takes from me as opposed to buying from me. I am not sure why they are making the comparison. It is an unfair comparison. If anyone looks at it, I don’t think WASA is selling less water than they were ten years ago.” The Blue Waters CEO also championed legislation to regulate the sector that would create jobs, opportunities and new industries.

He said the industry recognised the need for laws, particularly in reducing environmental impact.

However, he said the industry did not want to be a rubber stamp or rushed into agreeing with what government wanted without a true consultative process, where their opinions were genuinely considered. Hadeed said the industry, through a process of trial and error, knew what worked.

“We don’t want to re-invent the wheel. We are saying let’s take a look at what works and put together something that is proven.” Hadeed said some of the proven methods included refunds for used bottles. He also believed that a modified version of Barbados legislation could be used in TT.

“We want to make sure there is an opportunity to take care of the environment, but not create unnecessary burden on manufacturers or importers.

Nor should one producer have an unfair advantage. You should not be using the environment as an excuse to get an unfair leg up on competitors. We also want legislation that creates a sustainable re-cycling industry, then we will support.” Hadeed said Blue Waters was unlikely to enter the recycling business itself. However, legislation should allow those in the industry to decide whether they would recycle themselves, partner with someone, or contract their recycling services out completely.