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Caitlin Corner-Dolloff wants you to think outside the bottle, the water bottle, specifically those plastic ones.  Corner-Dolloff has brought the global fight against corporate water privatization to Connecticut.  She is the Field Organizer for Corporate Accountability International (CAI), a 30+ year old non-profit dedicated to fighting corporate abuse.

CAI’s latest campaign is to get more people to stop buying bottled water, which fuels the draining of aquifers in such places as India, where water resources are more scarce and in high demand.  The bottled water market facilitates the privatization of water worldwide by such multinational corporations as Pepsi, Coke, and Nestle (based here in CT, by the way).

But the ills of bottled water don’t stop there.   Bottled water is often unregulated, which means unlike tap water, contamination does not have to be reported to the general public.  Plastic bottles require oil to manufacture.  In fact, if you were to put the amount of oil needed to produce one bottle into that bottle, it would be fill a quarter of the volume.  Plus, only about 20% of plastic water bottles are recycled, with the other 80% finding themselves in landfills and incinerators (billions of bottles each year).  Add to that the cost and resources for transporting the bottles.

In addition to the environmental impact, making water a commodity has altered people’s perceptions of water.  One in five people drink bottled water exclusively because they are convinced it’s the only way to get clean water.  This Environmental Working Group study (“10 Major Brands, 38 Pollutants”) suggests otherwise (Be sure to click on the Test Results section for startling specifics).  It found such contaminants as fertilizer residue, pain medication, disinfection byproducts, and even carcinogens.

Despite bottles laden with images of mountaintops and springs, 40% of bottled water comes straight from taps.   And, it’s sold back to consumers at a rate of anywhere from 100 to almost 2000 times the cost.  CAI won a fight against Aquafina which caused it to disclose its source (the tap), but there is no regulation that requires companies to do so.

Corner-Dolloff has already drummed up some political support in central Connecticut.  State Representative Beth Bye will bring the issue to the General Assembly and West Hartford mayor Scott Slifka has signed the Think Outside the Bottle Pledge.

But her sights are set higher: Governor Rell.  Corner-Dolloff sees the economic hardships of the state as an opportunity.  The state of Connecticut and many of its municipalities could save a lot of money by eliminating water coolers and bottled water at events.  She also finds it ironic that government officials who are charged with overseeing public water supplies often fail to use those very same systems.  Instead of spending money importing water at an exorbitant cost, Corner-Dolloff says, why not allocate some of that money to maintain and upgrade public water systems to ensure that water is as clean and accessible as it can be?

ThinkOutsideTheBottle.org has a ready-made letter to Governor Rell for concerned citizens to sign, found here: http://tinyurl.com/rellwaterletter.   The letter will be delivered to the governor on Wednesday February 11 at 11AM in the Legislative Office Building, room 2A.   Corner-Dolloff can be reached via email at: thinkoutsidethebottlect@gmail.com or by phone at (860) 231-9839.

(image credit: Trinitas Imaging – http://flickr.com/photos/uditk/1590855800/)

To me it is utterly amazing how our system of injustice can blatantly abuse the rights of citizens and organizations who are simply exercising their right to protest ~ yet let US corporations, under the guise of Free Market Economics, routinely impose economic shock techniques in their effort to capitalize upon targeting and manipulating the poor and working class for profit, aka The Poverty Business.

I am not a lawyer and so this writing is not a legal discourse on this subject. This piece simply arises out of just a little outrage at a system of injustice that employs State Violence to harm and then prosecute political dissenters (e.g. RNC8), yet this same system has served a blind eye to corporate instituted violence; if not actually being a co-conspirator of corporate induced violence. A most recent case in point is the tragic death of a Wal-mart worker (no less temporary worker) who was trampled to death by a mob; a mob instigated specifically by a Valley Stream Wal-mart Black Friday sale. I won’t even bother going into the details of this tragic death for the details are well documented. However, I would like to delve into the irresponsibility of Corporate America and a Free Market system of economics, and their ability to instigate and promote violence through economic manipulation and control.

As many of us know, mobs and riots at Wal-mart’s on Black Friday are nothing new.  For reference, I link two stories and one video as specific outcomes of Wal-mart’s marketing tactics which intentionally create the situation for a mob mentality that results in rioting [see here, here and here]. To me, it is very clear that Wal-mart intentionally advertises, for Black Friday, huge discounts on merchandise that are good for a limited time at a ridicously limited supply. In addition, in order to whip up the public anticipation of these sales, they have worked hard to legally protect their assurance that the Wal-mart Black Friday circulars are released only days prior to Black Friday. To whit, in 2007 Wal-mart sent a legal notice to many websites stating:

Wal-Mart’s circulars are protected by copyright laws, and any unauthorized reproduction, publication or distribution of that information prior to Wal-Mart’s release date of Nov. 19 for its Black Friday ads “violates Wal-Mart’s right.”

Clearly Wal-mart is explicitly assuring, and backing by legal means, its ability to create a sensational environment by assuring a controlled and last minute release of its sale items. In addition Wal-mart assures that the items on deep discount are limited to a relatively few, therefore over the years creating a mentality that if I am not first to reach this item, I will not be able to take advantage of this deep discount. And so with Wal-mart fueling the consumers greed, desires and ambitions, they are consciously instigating a mob mentality to shopping. By allowing, over many years, uncontrolled crowds of people, exceeding thousands, to crowd for hours directly at their front doors with sales merchandise in sight like meat to a starving animal. From a marketing perspective this behavior is knowing and calculated, resulting in numerous mob scenes and riots at their Black Friday early morning door openings! And not just one isolated incident occurring, but many hundreds across the US and spanning many years!

I may not be a lawyer, but to me this is simply a direct attempt by a Corporation to lure shoppers in large crowds (i.e. mob) to gather uncontrolled for hours at their front doors and then allowing them to run uncontrolled (i.e. riot), once the doors are opened, to the extremely limited bait that they have hung out to poor and desperate shoppers. I’m sorry but to me Wal-mart executives clearly encourage a mob mentality to operate at their stores and the subsequent store riots to be a direct consequence of their Black Friday marketing techniques. And so I make the connection that Wal-mart is guilty of Conspiracy to Riot! Plain and simple. As an aside, this is not meant to remove any blame from those shoppers who partake in this riot, however I think many would concur that the marketing techniques of Wal-mart are clearly designed to instigate a mob mentality for shopping on Black Friday. To state another way, the shopping public are simply the actors in a riotous and now deadly play choreographed and directed by Wal-mart marketing and corporate executives! And that they have knowingly and repeatedly created the environment for a mob mentality that has led to the instigating of riots. Or put more simply: they lit a match and threw it into a pool of gasoline.  Or if you prefer: they yelled fire in a crowded theater.

“It’s our culture of excess and meaningless consumption — the glorified spending and borrowing of the past decade that’s at the root of the crisis we now find ourselves in.”

Some of the practical suggestions Adbusters make are:

• Credit card cut up – standing outside a major shopping center with scissors, offering to cut up shoppers’ extra credit cards.  According to Bankrate.com, Americans carry between five and ten credit cards.
• Zombie Walk – walking around shopping malls, mimicking the undead expressions of shoppers.  Some activists go as far as painting their faces and wearing torn clothing, in typical zombie fashion.
• Whirl Mart – go to your favorite sprawl store with nine of your friends, each wheeling a shopping cart.  Form a congo line of shopping carts and wander aimlessly through the store without buying anything.