Two different types of fictive projects based around bottled water have hit the market recently. With “daily nutritional values” ranging from -200,000% Carbon Tetrachloride to 2% polar bear tears and 98% melted ice caps, they are both part of campaigns to raise awareness over toxic spills, lying advertising and to end our massive consumption of bottled water.
Marking the 25th anniversary of the 1984 chemical spill caused by Union Carbide in Bhopal, India, the Yes Men, Bhopal Medical Appeal and London creative design firm Kennedy Monk have developed elegant bottles of water called B’eau pal.
The group explains:
“The unique qualities of our water come from 25 years of slow-leaching toxins at the site of the world’s largest industrial accident.”
A tempting product indeed. And the name itself is a great play on words referring to the geographical site of the catastrophe, or translated to the amicable “Beautiful Pal” in Franglais. The red and white label is inspired by the logo of Dow Chemicals, the owner of Union Carbide.
The Start A Lie Campaign for the anti-bottle water project Tappening is about creating and spreading false information about bottled water (as if the information we have about it isn’t bad enough). Lies being spread right now range from “Bottled water always sits in the front seat, even when I call shotgun” to “For every bottle of water you consume you lose one erection”.
Taking into consideration that it takes 3 liters of water to make 1litre of bottled water, or the fact local ground water is still contaminated in Bhopal, these tongue-in-cheek campaigns might shed some light on larger issues.
We also recommend taking the Foreign Policy magazine’s water test for a quick check on your water knowledge.
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They day The Powers That Be stop putting fluoride in the water will be the day I stop buying bottled water.
July 28th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
@ Floyd – I’ll have to agree with you there.
July 28th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Cheers Dan. It amazes me a government can drug a water supply and there is little fuss over it.
This is quite interesting: http://www.fluoridealert.org/
July 28th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I’m pretty excited that the bottled water issue if finally receiving some hype. Corporate Accountability International has been working on this issue for a couple years with their Think Outside the Bottle campaign. They’re campaign isn’t quite so tongue-in-cheek, but super awesome and making some real change. check them out – http://www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org or http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org
July 28th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
that’s a great idea.
http://www.allwatermeter.com/
July 30th, 2009 at 1:43 am