Nathalia Freeman, Grade 12
Ms. Bateman, Teacher / Boston Latin School
"Tap Water: Conservation, Stewardship and Responsibility"
In today's commercial society we are surrounded by advertisements. From billboards to buses to product placement in television shows Americans are constantly bombarded with messages to buy things.
Obviously the majority of these advertisements are financed by major corporations wishing to further their sales but public relations campaigns are of major importance and have a significant effect on the way people think and act.
A massive amount of pollution is caused by the excessive creation of bottles for water and this is unnecessary in any major American city. Clean, potable water is available through a tap in every home and as a country we are acting irresponsibly by promoting the wasteful behavior of the bottled water corporations.
One of the most successful examples of a campaign to promote the health benefits of a certain product is the "got milk" campaign. Although the "got milk" campaign was not a public relations campaign and was funded by corporations to boost sales it still had an enormous effect.
I would model my public relations campaign on the "got milk" campaign by trying to create humorous television commercials while still making health statistics clear to the viewer. I would also put billboards in public places and rely on other classic advertising techniques.
Of the many health related and societal benefits of drinking Water from a tap rather than purchasing a bottle I would be sure to emphasize the fact that drinking water from a tap is a very easy
way to go green.
On the surface the manufacturing of billions of bottles a year seems like an obvious problem because of the disposal alone but in reality it is a much deeper issue.
According to the Earth Policy Institute "Just manufacturing the 29 billion plastic bottles used for water in the United States each year requires the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of crude oil."
Fossil fuels are used for the production of water bottles and a massive amount of gasoline is needed to transport the water from the factories to the consumers. "The energy used for pumping and processing, transportation, and refrigeration, brings the annual fossil fuel footprint of bottled water consumption in the United States to over 50 million barrels of oil equivalent-enough to run 3 million cars for one year."
Many people are unaware that several major bottled water companies use tap water and pretend that it is from a spring or fresh source. In my public relations campaign I would make this clear to the average person. No one likes to waste money and by exposing companies and their manipulation of consumers my campaign would cause people to realize that they can get water of the same quality for free.
However some people are not easily convinced and a more personal measure would need to be taken. A relatively easy way to do this would be to form a public service organization that took water samples from people's kitchen sinks. By testing the sample against bottled water and sending the results to the homeowner we could show people how good their water really is. We could also develop and distribute a home test that average people would be able to conduct in order to compare the difference between bottled and tap water for themselves.
New York, San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago and Los Angeles are leading the way in tap water public relations campaigns in the United States today. San Francisco, St. Louis and Los Angeles have restricted the purchase of bottled water for city-sponsored events and by city employees. Chicago placed a tax on bottled water in an attempt to decrease the amount of trash and litter in the city while in New York citizens and restaurants are urged to use tap water rather than bottled.
By emphasizing the health benefits of water in general and proving the lack of a difference between bottled water and tap, Boston can surpass these cities and become an example of conservation, stewardship and responsibility to the rest of the country and world.
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