HIGH GLOSS

from The Surfers Journal:

“This was taken at a break we call The Spot on the east coast of Australia near Byron Bay,” says photographer Lee Jonsson. “The water had amazing clarity and there wasn’t a breath of wind.”


Click to see this big

"All I Wanted Was a Pepsi" The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

from The New York Times:



The drop in soda consumption represents the single largest change in the American diet in the last decade.
By MARGOT SANGER-KATZ

Five years ago, Mayor Michael A. Nutter proposed a tax on soda in Philadelphia, and the industry rose up to beat it back.

Soda lobbyists made campaign contributions to local politicians and staged rallies, with help from allies like the Teamsters union and local bottling companies. To burnish its image, the industry donated $10 million to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

It worked: The soda tax proposal never got out of a City Council committee.

It’s a familiar story. Soda taxes have also flopped in New York State and San Francisco. So far, only superliberal Berkeley, Calif., has succeeded in adopting such a measure over industry objections.

The obvious lesson from Philadelphia is that the soda industry is winning the policy battles over the future of its product. But the bigger picture is that soda companies are losing the war.

Even as anti-obesity campaigners like Mr. Nutter have failed to pass taxes, they have accomplished something larger. In the course of the fight, they have reminded people that soda is not a very healthy product. They have echoed similar messages coming from public health researchers and others — and fundamentally changed the way Americans think about soda.

Over the last 20 years, sales of full-calorie soda in the United States have plummeted by more than 25 percent. Soda consumption, which rocketed from the 1960s through 1990s, is now experiencing a serious and sustained decline.

Sales are stagnating as a growing number of Americans say they are actively trying to avoid the drinks that have been a mainstay of American culture. Sales of bottled water have shot up, and bottled water is now on track to overtake soda as the largest beverage category in two years, according to at least one industry projection.

The drop in soda consumption represents the single largest change in the American diet in the last decade and is responsible for a substantial reduction in the number of daily calories consumed by the average American child. From 2004 to 2012, children consumed 79 fewer sugar-sweetened beverage calories a day, according to a large government survey, representing a 4 percent cut in calories over all. As total calorie intake has declined, obesity rates among school-age children appear to have leveled off.

The change is happening faster in Philadelphia than in the country as a whole. Daily soda consumption among teenagers, a group closely tracked by federal researchers, dropped sharply — by 24 percent — from 2007 to 2013, compared with about 20 percent for the country. Last month, the city Department of Public Health reported a sustained decline in childhood obesity over the last seven years.

Those reductions are not accidents. The soda tax didn’t pass. But the debate about it, along with a series of related city policies, helped discourage people from drinking soda.

The Philadelphia school district forbids the sale of sugary beverages in schools and limits their availability in public vending machines. The city provides financial incentives for corner stores to highlight healthy foods. And it sends educators into public school classrooms to teach children about nutrition.

Philadelphia, which also has one of the country’s strictest menu-labeling laws, for two years ran radio and television ads encouraging parents to think twice about serving sugary drinks to their children.

“It’s a fight every day, and you just have to stick with it,” said Mayor Nutter, who will leave office in January. “You can’t give up, because it’s just really important.”

But while Philadelphia’s enthusiastic attention has led to outsize results, soda consumption is declining even in cities and towns that have not made big local investments in obesity prevention and public health. The public health community has coalesced around an anti-soda message, and health officials and industry experts agree that public attitudes about soda and consumer tastes are shifting in ways that may be permanent.

The beverage industry continues to fight these shifts — and especially to fight taxes on its products. But it is also aware that after decades of selling a handful of popular, iconic products, changing public attitudes are leading to a profound change in the nature of the business.
The New Tobacco

This summer, executives from the beverage industry gathered at the Harvard Club in New York City. The annual event, hosted by the trade magazine Beverage Digest, featured speakers from the three largest soda makers — Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group — along with smaller upstarts, like SodaStream, the home seltzer maker company, and Talking Rain, which makes no-calorie carbonated fruit drinks called Sparkling Ice.

Along the wood-paneled walls, croissants, fruit and silver urns of coffee were laid out. But the hot drinks were largely ignored. The industry’s rapidly expanding bounty was displayed in the center of the room. In an array of ice buckets were Snapple Sorta Sweet, Squirt, Tropicana Farmstand juices, Lipton Sparkling Iced Tea. In a back corner, attendees could make their own lime-basil and coriander apple blossom sodas with a SodaStream machine.

Such events give companies a chance to show their stuff and brag about their successes, but there was nothing bubbly about the atmosphere. This is an industry grasping to master the shifting market.

As John Sicher, Beverage Digest’s publisher, put it in his blunt opening remarks: “It’s been a really challenging decade. It would have been a lot rougher if not for bottled water.”

As sales of the companies’ mainstay products have declined in the United States, the companies have scrambled to offer new products better suited to consumer tastes. Iced teas, sports drinks and flavored waters are smaller but fast-growing segments of the beverage industry. Coca-Cola, for example, has nearly doubled the number of individual products it offers, to 700 this year from 400 in 2004. And companies are increasingly experimenting with smaller packages for sodas, for which customers will pay a higher price per ounce. At the Harvard Club, there was a 7.5-ounce Pepsi minican, which promised “real sugar” instead of high-fructose corn syrup, and a diminutive eight-ounce bottle of Sprite.

“There’s consumers out there that don’t want to consume too much,” said Regan Ebert, the senior vice president for marketing at Dr Pepper Snapple Group, in her presentation on how the company markets its products to Hispanic audiences. The small cans, she said, “do a good job of solving that need for consumers.”


READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/upshot/soda-industry-struggles-as-consumer-tastes-change.html?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email&referer&_r=0

MUST WATCH SATURDAY: The Story of Bottled Water

from The Story of Stuff (A website full of video's I highly recommend)

Story of Bottled Water FAQs

Is bottled water cleaner?
The EPA regulates tap water under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Public water operators must provide reports to customers describing their water’s source, evidence of contaminants, and compliance with federal, state, and local regulations. The FDA regulates bottled water and cannot require certified lab testing or violation reporting; bottlers themselves are responsible for testing. Furthermore, the FDA doesn’t require bottled water companies to disclose where the water came from, how it was treated, or what contaminants it contains.

Is bottled water tastier?
Corporate Accountability International’s “Think Outside the Bottle” Campaign has held countless taste tests comparing bottled water to tap water, as have many media outlets, from the New York Times to Cleveland’s local TV news channel. The results generally favor the tap. But ultimately, the point isn’t whether one tastes better than the other, its how our taste—and our tastes—are shaped by advertising rather than by what’s good for us.

Is bottled tap different than plain tap?
Bottled water companies go to great length to tell you that while their water originates from a public water source, its more than just filtered tap water. They boast proprietary, state-of-the-art, multistage filtration processes and esoteric references to mineral additives that make their water more than just water, and certainly better than tap.

But, as Tony Clarke of Canada’s Polaris Institute points out in his book, Inside the Bottle, “unlike other resource production processes, where raw materials like timber, minerals, and oil are transformed into new products, bottled water is different. Bottled water is about ‘turning water into water.'”
And keep in mind that 10 percent to 15 percent of the cost of bottled water goes to the advertising budget. We not only buy their myths, we pay extra for them!

What’s the energy footprint of water bottles?
The Pacific Institute breaks it down like this: “Because bottled water required approximately 1 million tons of PET [Polyethylene Terephthalate] in 2006, those bottles required roughly 100 billion MJ of energy. A barrel of oil contains around 6,000 MJ, so producing those bottles required the equivalent of around 17 million barrels of oil. This is enough energy to fuel one million American cars for one year.” If that sounds crazy that’s because it is!

Really, water is a right?
General Comment 15 of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—the definitive interpretation of human rights laws regarding water—says “the human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses” … and …” is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights.”

In other words, it is the job of our governments (as the entities responsible for guaranteeing human rights) to ensure that we have good, clean, affordable tap water.

Need some first steps to take?
Many companies sell safe, easy-to-clean, lightweight drinking water bottles. Food & Water Watch and Corporate Accountability International—two of our partners on this film—offer sleek, stainless steel, reusable bottles to their members. Or pick up a mug or glass or sippy cup or … well, you get the point.

An under-the-sink filter can eliminate both bacterial and chemical concerns if you have either. And you can learn more about your water quality by contacting your local water utility. If find something that concerns you, don’t just turn to bottled water, ask questions, talk to your neighbors and organize to win improvements to your water supply.

What can I do?
Before the bottled water craze hit, we took it for granted that public fountains were part of any public building: schools, offices, sports stadiums and parks. Let’s bring them back! In the U.S., many state building codes mandate that there be one source of public water for every 1,000 people the building has capacity for. Why not subsidize public water fountains as part of local efforts to build green?

Bottled water bans are also spreading fast.In the U.S., San Francisco, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Salt Lake City have all banned bottled water at city functions to save money and promote their cities’ highly drinkable tap water. And in Canada, the Polaris Institute reports that as of December 2009, 72 municipalities from 8 provinces and 2 territories had implemented restrictions on bottled water. Way to go!

Floating skate ramp on the crystal blue waters of Lake Tahoe

from our friends at Dangerous Minds

This looks fun as shit! The ramp is beautifully constructed, too. My only complaint is you’d have to have a lot of back-up boards handy as losing them in the water would be a bitch to retrieve every damned time.

As others point out in the YouTube comments, this isn’t the first floating ramp. Volcom made a floating mini-ramp three years ago and put in the ocean.

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WORLD WATER CRISIS

from ObeyGiant:

Please join our campaign to bring clean, safe drinking water to India!
It’s really easy and takes only a minute to literally change the life of someone in need.
Just click this link to join the campaign: http://my.charitywater.org/bne-x-shepard-fairey

Short film about Intertidal ocean life

PBS Digital Studios has launched a biweekly series called Under H2O, and the first episode is called "The Intertidal." It's only five minutes long, and well worth watching.

‘The Intertidal’ features rare underwater footage of a part of the marine world that often goes unexplored by scientists and cameramen alike: the intertidal. In this episode, Dr. Musburger and his team take cameras underwater as they sneak into this largely unexplored habitat during the short window of time when the tide is out and tide pools are accessible. With unmatched wave energy, temperature fluctuations, and salinity changes, only the hardiest plans and animals survive.

Thanks, Boing Boing

Places to swim in the world’s clearest water

Summer's halfway over...

Here's a few incredible shots. go HERE for the rest and full descriptions.

The UN Is Aiding a Corporate Takeover of Drinking Water

By Scott Thill, from AlterNet

Early last month, pharmaceutical titan Merck became the latest multinational to pledge allegiance to the CEO Water Mandate, the United Nations' public-private initiative "designed to assist companies in the development, implementation and disclosure of water sustainability policies and practices."

But there's darker data beneath that sunny marketing: The CEO Water Mandate has been heavily hammered by the Sierra Club, the Polaris Institute and more for exerting undemocratic corporate control over water resources (PDF) under the banner of the United Nations. It even won a Public Eye Award for flagrant greenwashing from the Swiss non-governmental organization Berne Declaration. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

"There is no admission of problems with the Water Mandate, or the United Nations Global Compact itself" -- the strategic policy initiative committed to human rights, labor and the environment -- Blue Gold and Blue Covenant author and activist Maude Barlow, who also chairs the National Council of Canadians and Food & Water Watch, explained to AlterNet. "These initiatives continue to flourish, not least because the most powerful member states of the United Nations are fully behind them. This also means that the United Nations is not funded fully. Programs and agencies often rely on private sponsorship to function, and are often barely getting their core administrative budgets funded."

Another major problem is that routinely compromised and controversial institutions like World Bank, International Monetary Fund and regional development banks in general are in control of the United Nations' biggest projects. In April, the World Bank assumed control of the United Nations Climate Conference's new $100 billion Green Fund, which is the opposite of a comforting proposition, considering the World Bank's repeatedly noxious financing of oil and coal projects.

"That gives control of billions of dollars to those who have been the most ardent promoters of water privatization," added Barlow, whose foreword for the Council of Canadians' recently damning report on private sector influence over the United Nations (PDF) argued that the planet is on the verge of a water crisis of terrifying proportions. "We're also seeing the IMF forcing indebted nations to sell off public assets, including water systems, as a condition of receiving financial support. The whole system is rigged for these corporations, and they still are losing contracts, not meeting their obligations and watching as remunicipalization moves forward in France and other core markets."

That kind of illogical corporate performance would logically lead to less control, not more. But the United Nations continues to hand over the reins to multinationals like its new cosigner Merck, which has repeatedly settled in court over everything from carcinogenic pollution to deceptive marketing. Despite the fact that the United Nations' own Joint Inspection Unit stated in a 2010 report (PDF) that the Global Compact's corporate partnerships were an unregulated mess.

"The lack of a clear and articulated mandate has resulted in blurred focus and impact," the report stated. "The absence of adequate entry criteria and an effective monitoring system to measure actual implementation of the principles by participants has drawn some criticism and reputational risk for the Organization, and the Office’s special set up has countered existing rules and procedures. Ten years after its creation, despite the intense activity carried out by the Office and the increasing resources received, results are mixed and risks unmitigated."

The report suggested that not only was a clearer mandate from Member States required to "rethink and refocus" the Compact's corporate partnerships, but that the United Nations' General Assembly must better direct the Secretary-General to delineate the Compact's overall functions "in order to prevent a situation whereby any external group or actor(s) may divert attention from the strategic goals agreed to promote interests which may damage the reputation of the United Nations." The short version? It's not working, and won't work in its current form for the foreseeable future.

But the United Nations' own advice to itself has evidently fallen mostly on deaf ears.

"Unfortunately, the United Nations appears to be embracing more and more partnerships with the corporate sector across the board," Corporate Accountability International campaign director Gigi Kellett told AlterNet. "Civil society has been raising concerns about this flawed approach for over 10 years. There are strong voices within the United Nations, including some Member states, who are questioning the partnership paradigm adopted by the UN and calling for more transparency and accountability."

But they are voices in the wilderness without the concerted support of a motivated public, as well as the usual civil society champions who make stopping this strain of corporate abuse their life's work. Power truly respects only one thing, and that is equally exercised power. And the public is fully empowered to make all the change it wants, provided it can unplug itself from distracting sex scandals and mainstream media marketing primarily designed to nurture its collective complacency.

"Corporations rely on people's tacit support and willingness to look the other way when they engage in conduct that harms people or the environment and undermines democratic governance and decision-making," Kellett said. "When people come together in coordinated fashion and withhold their support from a corporation, that relationship is turned on its head. Boycotts are one powerful way that individuals can withhold their support, but there are range of other strategies. When activists come together and raise questions about a corporation's actions and tie them to its brand and image, the resulting media exposure can greatly impact how the corporation is perceived by consumers, investors or even government regulators."

But how do you boycott a multinational that controls your water supply? Can you shame a mammoth corporation into abdicating control over a lucrative commodity that should instead be regarded as a universal human right? Talk about your Sisyphean tasks.

"Boycotts are much more difficult with water than a product like Coke," said Barlow. "There are no substitutes for water, and when these corporations are given monopoly power over water systems, boycotts are very unrealistic. Suez, Veolia and others are very concerned about their corporate image, but there is no effective means to hurt them financially except to end or block the contracts before they are signed. Boycotts have been very effective as public awareness campaigns, but citizens need to apply pressure on their governments as the first step in stopping the proliferation of voluntary initiatives."

Demanding regulation of the private sector's products -- from water and natural resource commodification to inscrutable financial instruments and beyond -- as well as the public's political electives appears to be the paramount first principle. Because the problem is getting worse and going nowhere, especially now that our dystopian climate crisis has permanently disrupted business, and existence, as usual. From escalating warming and extreme weather to destabilized nations and environments, Earth is already precariously balanced on the tipping point. And giving profit-minded corporations voluntary control over their power and procedures is a 20th century anachronism best left behind.

"We have not proven to have what it takes to deal with the climate crisis," argued Barlow, "and this is because it is all seen as a giant political and financial game, rather than the best and only chance to head off a catastrophe like we have never before imagined. Climate change is upon us, but we will never admit it fully, nor invest in stopping it, if our governments continue to represent corporate interests above others. It is up to us to challenge our states, and make sure they know we are engaged and aware."

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.