As municipalities across Canada continue to see extreme and unpredictable weather like flooding, heavy rain and drought, Wellington Water Watchers is continuing its fight against bottled water by celebrating becoming the newest ‘Blue Community.’
A Blue Community is an organization that adopts a water commons framework by recognizing water and sanitation as human rights, banning or phasing out the sale of bottled water in municipal facilities and at municipal events, and promoting publicly financed, owned and operated water and wastewater services.
The initiative was launched by author and activist Barlow, a founding member of the Council of Canadians. She has written numerous books about water rights and protections worldwide.
Barlow is the Keynote speaker at an online lunch and learn to celebrate Water Watchers becoming a Blue Community, which will take place July 30 at 2 p.m. Over the lunch hour, participants will learn about the initiative and how to use it as a tool in the movement towards water justice. The organization hopes others will be inspired to become Blue Communities as well.
“These threats to public drinking water are not felt equally,” said Arlene Slocombe, Water Watchers executive director in a press release.
“Widespread dependence on bottled water is a key marker of water injustice. It is low income people, communities of colour, and recent immigrants who disproportionately distrust their tap water and spend the most on bottled water both in absolute terms and as a proportion of their income. They must also continue to pay their water bills, which are rising everywhere.”
She said the profits from bottled water are “ funnelled back to four of the largest multinational food and beverage corporations in the world,” and that government agencies are at fault as well.
“Our governments still continue to issue permits for water bottling. Companies like Blue Triton (formerly Nestle) pay next to nothing to take this water and these multinational corporations make huge profits while depleting precious groundwater, all while Indigenous peoples continue to go without access to clean water on reserves across the nation. It’s just not right,” she said.
The press release references Daniel Jaffee’s book ‘Unbottled: The Fight Against Plastic Water and for Water Justice,’ which argues that moving away from bottled water is essential to ensure reliable public water access for everyone, and that packaged water poses a significant threat to the future of universal safe public drinking water.
“The global water justice movement must acknowledge bottled and packaged water as central to the global process of water commodification and as a key impediment to realizing the human right to water, not to mention a major environmental threat,” Slocombe said.
“We need to forge links with other anti-privatization and water justice movements and their constituencies (public sector unions, urban water movements, Indigenous communities) to become allies. Becoming a Blue Community is just another step in this journey and we invite people who want to see a sustainable water future to join us in the fight to keep water in the public realm.”
The event will take place over Zoom. RSVP here.
