The Canadian Blue Community Water Watchers sent out a call: Bottled Water is an Environmental Justice Issue.

Widespread dependence on bottled water is a key marker of water injustice. Bottled water exacerbates existing class and racial inequalities. It is low income people, communities of colour, communities on reserve, 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. Bottled water companies specifically are targeting people of colour as their biggest growth demographic. The injustice is clear. 

There are approximately 1 million people going without access to safe drinking water in Canada, including Indigenous communities and the housing insecure. Large numbers of people forced to drinking packaged water poses a significant threat to the future of universal safe public drinking water provisions. This happens because government has abandoned the obligation to deliver consistent supplies of safe water. Bottled water weakens the political consensus needed to build, expand, maintain, and adequately fund public water infrastructure. The fewer who drink from public supplies, the more governments will disinvest from public water – a vicious cycle leading to more dependence on bottled water. 

We must break the cycle of water injustice.

We are anticipating a 2025 provincial election and need to prepare now to be able to fight for water as a public good and put an end to water bottling in Ontario forever. Commitments to keep water as a public good, phase out permits to bottle water, and provide the human right to clean drinking water to all people must become election issues.