ironhorse_iv Review of Tapped

Tapped (I) (2009)

I watch tapped and drank it all up! It's a well-made documentary.

[7/10 · 5 June 2014]

The great debate of bottle water vs tap water got bottle up and release as a well-structured awe-inspiring documentary call Tapped. Directed by Stephanie Soechtig & Jason Lindsey, the movie shows the environmental injustice aspects of bottled water. While the movie is indeed one-sided, and can seem biased. The movie does give a chance for bottle water supporters to defend their product. It was deeply surprising to see representative from these big companies, as in most documentaries, they mostly refuse to speak. I do think, their interviews was edited a bit, to make them look dumbfounded to certain questioning or expose them as spin doctors. It was bit too trickery. The movie had a lot of good amount of evidence sources. The way, the documentary told it, through interviews, music, data/graphs, and video footage made watching the film, very entertaining. While, the movie did indeed had a bigger budget, there were little to no slow lectures parts, here. It's clear that tap water is indeed better for you than bottle water. The movie shows us why, but you can clearly go research it, yourself, and you find yourself with the same results as the movie. I think a lot of people need to watch this film, as one of the big reasons why people purchase bottled water is due to the old wives tales inaccuracies. These claims are often create by companies, to set fear into the public, so that the community would purchase overprice water, over nearly free drinking water. This is a great example how fear can somewhat dictate somebody's life. While, yes, there are some proved facts that some tap water in certain areas are contamination. For the most part, even for the low-income & minority households, tap water is deed safer than bottle water in developed countries like the US & Europe. Bottled water are believe to reduce amounts of copper, lead, and other metal contaminants since it does not run through the plumbing pipes where tap water is exposed to metal corrosion, however, this varies by the household and plumbing system. Bottle water often carry similar or worst off chemicals such as PET, PETE, and BPA (bisphenol A). Of these, BPA is the deadliest. This is because due to the lack of regulated by the company. It's not as regulated as often as tap water. One thing the film also forgot to mention is the alarming rate for bottled water in poorer developing countries. Sales of bottled water in Mexico, China, and parts of India, are rising steeply, due to fear of contaminated water. In my viewpoint, bottle water and tap water have the same health risk in those countries, due to the fact, that most bottle water are indeed tap water. While, I don't believe people that should buy bottle water, I do understand the reasons why certain people choice to. The lack of safe drinking water in certain areas should be the only reason to buy bottled water. Even so, I have to agree that plastic tax has be put into place to help recycled the plastic and stop wasteful trashing. Better yet, people should learn how to purification their own water supply, which the film also left off. The movie also left out, the religious questions of if the 'privatization" of water is ethical. One thing that the movie should explore more is the myth is the taste of water because it was one of the contributing factors to the marketing success of bottled water. Pure water has no taste. However minerals and impurities can alter or add to the taste, but it's not very noticeable. Most bottle waters misleads its consumers with this false advertising. While the movie gave a lot of information that can be useful for years to come. It's somewhat already dated. If you want more information about the debate of tap water over bottle water. Watch 2003's Penn & Teller episode on bottle waters to get more information about this. Also check out, 2008's Blue Gold: World Water Wars, 2010's Water on the table and 2008's Flow: For Love of Water. All of them are very good, and worth the time, watching. Overall: I would recommend this documentary to anyone willing to sit down, and think about their future. Indeed, water will play a big role in that.