WaterTalk | Unbottled: Plastic Water, Inequality, and Water Justice

Date: Thursday, January 23, 2025 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Location: ONLINE - via Zoom

As part of the Water Institute's WaterTalks lecture series, Daniel Jaffee, Professor of Sociology at Portland State University, Oregon, US, will present Unbottled: Plastic Water, Inequality, and Water Justice.

More Information:
In only four decades, bottled water has transformed from a luxury niche good into a ubiquitous consumer product, representing a $320 billion market led by global food and beverage firms. It sits at the nexus of the crises of single-use plastic waste and affordable access to safe drinking water, and struggles over the fate of public water systems. This talk explores the dynamics of packaged water’s rapid growth in the global North and South and considers the implications for sustainability, social inequality, and the human right to water. It addresses how bottled water consumption and spending in the U.S. vary along lines of class, race, and ethnicity, how they relate to uneven threats to and trust in tap water safety, and how the bottled water industry has responded. It also examines the diverse social movements that have emerged to challenge bottled water’s growth and their impact on the industry’s fortunes.