What are Your Really Drinking? – Tapped the Movie

Conscious Cinema Selection – Tapped

Tapped – Exploring the dark side of the bottled water industry

Directed by Stephanie Soechtig and Jason Lindsey

Tapped explores the businesses behind bottled water, the communities they have negatively impacted, and the potential dangers of the plastic produced. Join the debate on the privatization of natural resources versus the rights of the community.

OMTimes readers can watch Tapped tonight for FREE on Gaiam TV! Just click the movie picture or visit Tapped on Gaiam TV.

About the Movie

Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right, or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce? Stephanie Soechtig’s debut feature Tapped is an unflinching examination of the big business of bottled water.

From the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car and I.O.U.S.A., this timely documentary Tapped is a behind-the-scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of an industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never to become a commodity: our water.

From the plastic production to the ocean in which so many of these bottles end up, this inspiring documentary trails the path of the bottled water industry and the communities which were the unwitting chips on the table. A powerful portrait of the lives affected by the bottled water industry, this revelatory film Tapped features those caught at the intersection of big business and the public’s right to water.

Tapped explores the dark side of the bottled water industry. Human beings need clean drinking water to live. It is legal in some states for gigantic bottled water companies to suck public tap water sources dry (even when shortages force residents to ration water) then repackage and resell it at a gigantic markup – with infinitely less regulatory oversight than there is for tap water (and bottled water sold in the same state as it is pumped is virtually unregulated) – but is it ethical? Is the plastic used to create the water bottles truly safe for humans to put in their mouths? Perhaps worst of all is America’s catastrophic overall failure to recycle plastic water bottles, resulting in an avalanche of non-biodegradable waste being pitched into landfills, or even straight into the ocean, where plastic bottles form a large part of a floating ocean garbage mound hundreds of square miles large. The bottle deposit laws of some states have been a proven, highly effective method to promote recycling – but because it incurs a minor expense the enormously profitable bottled water industry (an expense otherwise borne by everyone who has to cope with improperly disposed plastic bottle), corporations fight such legislative measures tooth and nail. Corporate control over public water supply, and corporate refusal to help shoulder the burden of recycling the mounds of plastic trash that are the byproducts of its profit, can only be combated by political activism – ordinary citizens getting involved and laying claim to their water rights, as well as their rights to a clean environment. A must-see, highly recommended documentary, Tapped is guaranteed to make viewers think twice before paying through the nose for what is essentially bottled (and smartly advertised) tap water.