Corporate Accountability International: Los Angeles Goes with the FLOW

Corporate Accountability International: Los Angeles Goes with the FLOW

Water film and book release as restaurants, city phase out bottled water

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Water consciousness is hitting theaters, restaurants, and book stores this week in the city that was first to limit city spending on bottled water. Leading dining establishments like Grace Restaurant have announced their decision to stop selling bottled water. This Friday, Sundance documentary FLOW (http://flowthefilm.com/) opens in theaters and a new book, Water Consciousness (http://waterconsciousness.com/), will soon be hitting shelves.

It is all part of a national groundswell to Think Outside the Bottle that identifies the bottled water industry as both benefiting from as well as exacerbating the growing global water crisis. The United Nations projects that two in three people will soon lack access to enough water. At the same time, some water bottlers are pumping water from far flung locales and shipping it across continents and oceans.

"In this state, and across the globe, water corporations are transforming a public resource into a high-priced luxury," said Susan LaSalle, spokesperson for Corporate Accountability International. "And to add salt to the wound, corporations like Coke are disparaging public tap water, bottling it, and then selling it back to us for more than the price of gasoline."

Earlier this summer, Mayor Villaraigosa was one of hundreds of mayors to pass a U.S. Conference of Mayors resolution encouraging the phase-out of city spending on bottled water.

"Bottled water sends the wrong message about our public water systems," said Mayor Villaraigosa. "Our tap water is among the best in the world and to keep it that way we need to continue to invest in it, not in generating mountains of plastic bottle waste." Tap water is not only more highly regulated than bottled water - up to 40 percent of bottled water in fact comes from the same source as tap water. And, every year, four billion pounds of PET plastic wind up in landfills or as roadside litter.

Such environmental and social concerns have caused leading restaurateurs to join the cause.

"In the restaurant business we are constantly looking at supply chain - how we can get the freshest, safest, tastiest food from seed to plate," said Grace Restaurant's Neal Fraser. "Pumping greenhouse gases into the environment to truck water around, when we can get it from the tap, shouldn't be a part of that supply chain."

The feature-length documentary film FLOW and AlterNet Books release Water Consciousness both tackle these local issues of concern with respect to bottled water, and the broader debate over the privatization of water.

"The film questions the very nature of water and our relation to it," said Director Irena Salina. "It shows how local action can challenge giant corporations, and how the privatization of water has jeopardized the way of life for entire populations."

FLOW premieres at 7:30pm on Friday, September 12th at the Laemmle Sunset 5 Theatre. A panel featuring Corporate Accountability International spokesperson Susan LaSalle will follow the showing. Water Consciousness will be released nationally on October 15.

Contacts:
Sara Joseph, 617-784-5278
Nick Guroff, 617-447-2507

Source: Corporate Accountability International

CONTACT: Sara Joseph, +1-617-784-5278, or Nick Guroff, +1-617-447-2507,
both of Corporate Accountability International

Web Site: http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/

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