Business

July 28, 2007

H2Ohhh: Aquafina from tap

After complaints, Pepsi will clarify label to indicate source of popular bottled water.

Staff and wire reports

NEW YORK — So you thought that water in your Aquafina bottle came from some far-away spring bubbling deep in a glen?

Try the same place as the water in your tap.

PepsiCo Inc. is the latest company to offer some clarity about the source of its top-selling bottled water as it announced on Friday it would change the label on Aquafina water bottles to spell out that the drink comes from the same source as tap water.

A group called Corporate Accountability International has been pressuring bottled water sellers to curb what it calls misleading marketing practices. The group has criticized PepsiCo over its blue Aquafina label with a mountain logo as perpetuating the misconception that the water comes from spring sources.

Aquafina is the single biggest bottled water brand, and its bottles are now labeled “P.W.S.” The new labels will spell out “public water source.”

Aquafina water is taken from public sources then purified in a seven-step process.

John Tondora, plant manager for Nature’s Way Pure Water Systems in Dupont, said labels on all of the company’s products specify the source. The company bottles three different lines; filtered water from a public reservoir, distilled water and spring water. Labels on all of them read “bottled by Nature’s Way,” he said, and then list the source. For filtered water that is the Watres Reservoir in Moscow, owned by Pennsylvania-American Water, Tondora said.

“In Pennsylvania it’s the law that you have to specify exactly where the water comes from,” he said, although he has questioned why larger bottlers such as Pepsi have been able to avoid the requirement.

Nature’s Way produces much of the Ethos water that is sold at Starbucks and select retail stores in the United States and Canada. That product comes from Tomhicken Spring near Hazleton. Even though the company has secondary spring sources, Tondora said Starbucks and other customers want their water to come from a single source.

“A lot of people mix their spring sources together,” he said. But his customers will not accept that. “It all has to state on there exactly where it comes from.”

Wal-Mart stores sell all three of the company’s products under the Great Value brand and Nature’s Way bottles private label water for other stores such as Redner’s and Safeway. It also has its own Penns Mountain brand.

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