Jeff Smith of the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy (GRIID) presented the following comments at the 2008 Grand Rapids Water Festival held at Riverside Park on June 27.

I was asked to make a few comments based upon an article I wrote for Recoil recently about the issue of Greenwashing. Greenwashing originally was a term that was used to describe a PR tactic by corporations who have tried to present themselves as being environmentally responsible companies. For example, the oil company British Petroleum (BP) changed its name a few years ago to Beyond Petroleum and started to do things like put solar panels on their gas pumps to provide lighting at night. Let's make no mistake about it, these are tactics to not only lull us into thinking they are being environmentally responsible, these are tactics which distract us from having to think about their horrendous environmental and human rights record.

Groups like Corporate Watch have done a great job over the years documenting these kinds of cases and even give out regular awards called the Greenwasher of the Year Award. But since we are here today to learn about and celebrate our relationship to water, let's talk a bit about Greenwashing as it relates to water.

Maude Barlow, who is with the Blue Planet Project and the author of the recent book Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, says that humans on average need about 50 liters of water per day for drinking, cooking, and sanitary purposes. Right now, the average person living in Africa uses about 6 liters per day, but the average American uses about 600 liters a day. Barlow calls this a form of water apartheid, where a smaller percentage of the world's population consumes the bulk of the world's fresh water.

And when we talk about our consumption of water, I don't mean what we as individuals use, I mean what our social and economic systems use. For instance, in the production of wood pulp to make paper on average it takes around 120,000 gallons of water to produce 1 ton of paper. In the process of bleaching cotton to make it white it takes 72,000 gallons of water for every ton of cotton. Or think about the production of computers or even just computer chips. Water warrior Vandana Shiva states in her book Water Wars, that for every six-inch silicon wafer used in computers it uses 2,275 gallons of water in the process. On average, a factory operated by a company like Intel will produce about 2,000 computer chips a week. At Intel's plant in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, that means 4,550,000 gallons per week would be used. In order for them to do this they need to bring water in from somewhere else since much of the river and underground aquifers are drying up in the southwest part of the US.

Of course, one of the biggest culprits in diverting water is the bottled water industry. The bottled water industry has been one of the main beneficiaries of the World Trade Organization provision that states that water is a "good" or a "commodity" and therefore can be exported and imported. What this translates to is huge global corporations like Nestle are privatizing water for the sole purpose of re-packaging it and selling it back to us for a profit. And Nestle alone owns 70 different brands of bottled water that they distribute in 130 countries. Again, according to Maude Barlow, for the price that one pays for a bottle of water, you could drink 4,000 liters of tap water.

And to add insult to injury, Nestle promotes itself as a Green company. On their website under the section entitled "Doing Our Part" it says:

"Nestlé Waters worldwide uses just 0.0009 percent per year of the total estimated freshwater withdrawn around the world. This is a small percentage, considering that consumers are choosing bottled spring water more frequently as their choice for calorie-free, convenient refreshment. Consumers also rely upon bottled water if the public water supply becomes unavailable."

So, here is a company that negotiates with local communities to gain access to mostly underground aquifers, water that should be for public use only, and then bottles it and ships it all over the world. Then on top of that, they lobby heavily to prevent legislation that would protect fresh water systems locally and at the international level. They along with other huge companies have hijacked the political process by being involved in unaccountable entitles such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. It is really important that we understand that the bottom line for Nestle is to make profits and expand their market and that in my opinion will always be in conflict with truly sustainable water use. Recently, Nestle has begun marketing to kids with their new product line of bottled water called Aquapods. These are small cool shaped bottles of water that are being marketed to kids in DC Comic Books and on Nickelodeon. In response, Kids Only, a leading US manufacturer of children's products has launched its own bottled water brand. They have teamed up with Scooby Doo, Bratz, Superman, and Spiderman so, as it says on their bottles, "kids can get the hydration they need in a fun way...by drinking water that comes in collectible bottles." Just an example of expanded markets, which means that fresh water any where will be targeted for privatization.

So, Greenwashing is a pervasive practice that we must be able to identify and challenge. We cannot let companies or governments who claim to be green off the hook. We have to stop giving these institutions a free pass just because they use this language and come to meetings expressing their concern for the planet. In fact, we need to be extra scrupulous with any institution that claims to be green. This is just good old fashioned critical thinking that we need to apply. Even if institutions make donations to festivals like this we must not assume that they are engaging sustainable green practices.