What kind of "mouthfeel" does your drinking water provide? The bottled water industry is pulling out all the marketing stops to convince you that their water is "more than a pretty taste," as long as you’re willing to pay more for it — as much as  $40 a bottle in the case of BlingH20, the company that uses the above quoted slogan.

 

It’s all an effort to "turn water into the new wine," the Washington Post reports this morning.

 

 But some local government leaders — including Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chávez — are balking at claims that bottled water is any better than the stuff that comes out of our taps. The U.S. Conference of Mayors last week passed a resolution urging city governments to limit bottled water to emergencies like a contamination outbreak or natural disaster, the paper said:

 

Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chávez, who helped spearhead the initiative, said in an interview that it was triggered by a combination of cost and environmental concerns.

"It has a 1,000 to 10,000 percent markup over tap water," Chávez said of bottled water. "Most taxpayers would be outraged if we paid $1,000 for a pen when it is available for a dollar."

But Chávez said he also wants to combat the notion at the heart of the bottled-water industry’s marketing efforts: "The subtext of the bottled-water industry is the suggestion that tap water is unsafe or unhealthy, or that bottled water is better or healthier. America’s mayors have no problems with the industry marketing the convenience of bottled water. In a free-enterprise system, consumers may want to spend more on a product that they can get from the tap, but we resist any suggestion that bottled water is healthier than water that comes out of the tap."



The Post notes that empirical tests have repeatedly shown that there is little difference between bottled water and tap water. In fact, the clean drinking water supply in the U.S. and other developed countries is an "underappreciated scientific and technological achievement," yet many people living in these countries are increasingly turning to bottled water. Inhabitants of the the nation’s poorest countries, meanwhile, have limited access to clean water.



Chavez isn’t the only New Mexico mayor to speak out on the bottled water issue. Santa Fe Mayor David Coss told the Albuquerque Journal last year that while a bottled water ban might not be imminent, Coss did stop serving it at City Council meetings and other city functions.

 "In a sense, (bottled water) is very convenient, but it’s not a sustainable environmental practice," Coss said. "Our tap water is great."