The documentary, Tapped, is about the issue of the bottled water industry and its impact on the environment, as well as communities around the United States. It takes a look at a major corporation which controls most of the bottled water industry, Nestle, and uses interviews and studies to discuss the bottled water industry. The documentary argues for and against the bottled water industry, but tends to favor the anti-industry perspective in most cases. There are many different issues discussed in this documentary and the main ones are the costs, both against the environment and community of the region used by Nestle for water mining. Freyburg, Maine was used as the study area for this documentary and the first part of the documentary was located in this city. Water bottles are a part of our everyday life. They are sold in any urban area as well as any store. The industry has begun to be a social issue in the recent decades with environmental awareness and the preservation of nature on the rise. One of the issues discusses concerning the city of Freyburg is how Nestle operates its business. Freyburg is a small, rural town with a population of about 3,000 people. Large businesses were not meant to take over the town, but when Nestle arrived in Freyburg, it took over one of the features of rural life, fresh water from nearby rivers. They set up their business and many people in Freyburg believe they are cheating the system by not paying taxes on the water they (Nestle) are taking from the town. The river should be a public resource along with the water flowing through it, but Nestle has come in and is profiting off the losses of Freyburg by bottling the water from the natural sources and shipping it worldwide. Another important fact about bottled water as opposed to tap water is the regulation by the FDA. Tap water has a much higher quality control than bottled water because of the plastics used in manufacturing and bottling of water. Plastic bottle manufacturers have been known to not control the toxic effects of the manufacturing process and dump toxic waste in the environment. On the positive side of the argument, the documentary discusses how bottled water is better than tap water in some cases, mainly foreign countries in which the infrastructure is not as advanced as the United States’. However, the downside to this is that the manufacturing plants in these countries do not have advanced recycling systems and sometimes resort to dumping waste and empty bottles in the ocean, creating more environmental waste.

This topic is one that I have considered before. I used to be someone who would buy water bottles frequently and then dispose of them at the end of the day. Not only is this an expensive habit, but it is very wasteful compared to the alternatives. Drinking tap water out of faucets or water fountains in public places is a much more environmentally friendly decision because every plastic bottle that is thrown away ends up in a dump or recycling center somewhere. Today, I use a re-usable, plastic Nalgene bottle that holds more water than a regular plastic water bottle and it is a more environmentally friendly decision. I do not consider myself someone who constantly tries to be “green”, but I do agree that reusable water bottles should be used whenever possible to cut down on the waste created by manufacturing and dumping of plastic. In my opinion, a major change in the usage of bottled waters will not happen anytime soon because of how attached people have become to the idea of bottled water. Many people are buying reusable water bottles like I have and this is making