Unbottled: The Fight against Plastic Water and for Water Justice

An exploration of bottled water's impact on social justice and sustainability, and how diverse movements are fighting back.

In just four decades, bottled water has transformed from a luxury niche item into a ubiquitous consumer product, representing a $300 billion market dominated by global corporations. It sits at the convergence of a mounting ecological crisis of single-use plastic waste and climate change, a social crisis of affordable access to safe drinking water, and a struggle over the fate of public water systems. Unbottled examines the vibrant movements that have emerged to question the need for bottled water and challenge its growth in North America and worldwide.
 
Drawing on extensive interviews with activists, residents, public officials, and other participants in controversies ranging from bottled water's role in unsafe tap water crises to groundwater extraction for bottling in rural communities, Daniel Jaffee asks what this commodity's meteoric growth means for social inequality, sustainability, and the human right to water. Unbottled profiles campaigns to reclaim the tap and addresses the challenges of ending dependence on packaged water in places where safe water is not widely accessible. Clear and compelling, it assesses the prospects for the movements fighting plastic water and working to ensure water justice for all.

Table of Contents:
Contents

List of Figures and Tables 
Preface 

Introduction 
1. A More Perfect Commodity 
2. Making a Market, Fearing the Tap, Building a Backlash 
3. Flint: Corroding Pipes, Eroding Trust 
4. Reclaiming the Tap 
5. Cascade Locks: A Decade-Long Struggle 
6. Guelph and Elora: Watching Water, Broadening the Movement 
7. Empty Bottles: Water Justice and the Right to Drink 
Conclusion 

Acknowledgments 
Notes 
References 
Index 

About the Author :
Daniel Jaffee is Professor of Sociology at Portland State University. His previous book, Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival, received the C. Wright Mills Book Award. Learn more at www.danieljaffee.net.

Review :
"In his new book, Unbottled, author Daniel Jaffee explores how bottled water’s meteoric rise has exacerbated inequality and intensified pollution." "Jaffee emphasizes the resistance against bottled water’s hegemony, not just its negative effects, leaving the reader astonished but still hopeful. . . . For those wanting to fight for climate and water justice, this book is a must-read." "Unbottled will be required reading for anyone wanting to get the big picture on why we have been inundated with plastic containers selling something readily available and how we might get out of this mess."  "Jaffee provides a tautly written, highly digestible assessment of the intricate economic and political forces driving corporate efforts to commodify and privatize the world’s deteriorating—and vanishing—water supply." "Jaffee, the premier researcher in this field, shows us that this new water bottle paradigm is also a site of fierce and growing contestation. He takes us systematically through the processes in which residents, activists, tribes and researchers have built networks and proven strategies to organize against new concessions and bottling operations and defend local water uses. This book represents more than 15 years of research and it is a carefully crafted collage . . . with conclusions and reflections on the way forward."