By Anna Brones

Photo: Stefan Radtke

In 2007, Eric Yaverbaum of Ericho Communications and Mark DiMassimo of DiMassimo Goldstein (DIGO) were screening Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home, a movie showcasing how the family household and its waste has become one of the greatest environmental predators of our time. While watching the movie, Yaverbaum had an “aha moment,” as he was shocked at the real impact of his bottled water consumption on the environment. “It was mind-blowing to me. Those bottles [cause that much waste]??? And I’m drinking them for what reason exactly, because I have a perception that they’re healthier, and they’re safer, are they???”

Both fathers concerned about the future of the planet for their children, the two men, with 50 years of brand building experience under their belts, set off to represent tap water. This wouldn’t be a high paying account, in fact, as Yaverbaum points out, tap water certainly was “not a paying client.” But Yaverbaum and DiMassimo were committed to using their skills and experience to make positive change for the environment. Tappening and a national ad campaign to re-brand tap water were officially born.

Since its creation, the Tappening site has had almost 5 million visitors, and sales of their re-usable water bottles are through the roof. It might not solely be on account of Tappening, because as Yaverbaum says, “there are a lot of great groups out there,” but tap water is certainly making a comeback. For the first time in history, Pepsi announced this month that its quarterly earnings were down 10%, mostly on account of decline in sales of bottled water and soda.

I had a chance to talk to Yaverbaum, a man who once worked for the industry to brand Vitamin Water but who now keeps the last bottle of water he ever drank (it was back in 2007) on his windowsill, about Tappening, how he became an advocate for the environment and about the absurdity of our obsession with drinking bottled water.

Wend: Where did you come up with the name Tappening?

Eric Yaverbaum: We wanted to have a name that meant something… when you said it the name itself had some kind of relevance to what we were trying to basically push which was basically an education about tap water. To us tappening was quintessentially perfect; it was a verb, it showed action, it wasn’t happening it was “tappening.”

W: Where are you coming from in the bottled water debate? A waste perspective? An environmental perspective? A health perspective?

EY: Everything I learned about the environment I learned from my 16 year old. She made me change the lightbulbs, she made me get rid of the SUV, she was carrying around a Nalgene bottle. I didn’t know what that was. So I asked her. I said, “Wow that’s pretty interesting, I had no idea that was an issue at all.”

It’s embarrassing what my generation does not know. We’re not going to be around when the planet’s not around, but my grandchildren might be and that has me absolutely concerned. In the past year, I’ve debated PhDs, scientists, people who have been studying the environment for 30 years who tell me that there’s no global warming. I don’t understand all that data, I never did, but I do get that I’m sitting at an table outside, in February, in New York City when it’s supposed to be blistery winter and it’s 75 degrees; I know something’s wrong. I know the weather is different. I know that there are things that I can tangibly see that are different about this planet that we live on. Then you look at the data. Why are we just sitting around to do nothing, waiting for the next generation to rescue us? It’s my generation, I believe, that should be seriously investing itself in that process if we care at all what this planet is like after we’re going.

W: How do you think people got hooked on the bottled water craze? Has bottled water simply succeeded because of an excellent marketing campaign?

EY: The multi nationals and their bottled water “divisions” are like countries, I mean, this is BIG business. This is 30 years of serious, serious marketing money. 30 years of advertising. We bought it. We bought it. That bottle branded us in the gym. We were doing the healthy thing. And while it is certainly healthier to drink a bottle of water than a coca cola, and I cannot say 100% of the time it’s not a better idea… But more often than not, in many situations, in many towns and municipalities, it makes absolutely no sense.

If you care a little – just a little bit – about the environment, and maybe you’re not going to turn down your air conditioning and your not going to stop driving and your not going to change your light bulbs or get rid of your SUV like I did, maybe you won’t do anything, here’s one little thing you can do. And if you don’t buy my environmental argument, buy my financial one… financially speaking if you drink 8 glasses a day you will spend $1400 a year buying bottled water. If you drink 8 glasses a day and you get it from your tap you’ll spend 49 cents. This would be a really good year to save your $1400 on a product that not only hurts the environment but it hurts your pocketbook.

If you look at what’s happening now, it’s almost like an awakening. I don’t care whether it’s because people have become a little more environmentally conscious, or because they want to save money, what I care about is, we don’t need the bottles in the landfills. And that’s just the end of the process. What people fail to recognize is the 17.5 million barrels of oil that we use a year to make bottled water. That’s looney!

W: In some areas of the world, bottled water is a must. With an international perspective, what is the answer to bottled water?

EY: That’s the tragic thing about it, we in this country take it for granted that we can turn on the faucet and drink the water. Go to India, you name the 3rd world country and Look what they need to do to get drinking water and we get it for free in our homes and our apartments and we still buy bottled water, that’s crazy. What do we do in the rest of the world? I don’t have the answer. I do know that we do have the answer here and it’s borderline criminal that we don’t know that. Which is why I implore people to go to the homepage of my site, don’t buy a bottle, buy anybody’s bottle, I don’t care whose you buy. Just read the homepage on any given day, you’ll find up to date information.  We give you resources so you can evaluate on your own and make your own decision. It’s a free world, if you choose bottled water, god bless you. But for me having the education put in front of me, it was crystal clear that we were wasting our money to buy glaciers on labels that don’t really exist.

W: You’ve only been around a little under a year, where do you see Tappening headed?

EY: It’s been such an enormous learning experience for me, but that learning experience has only made me that much more impassioned about what I am doing; being able to take the mind of a marketer and working backwards to make the planet a better place.

We, by the way, while we get criticized for making money, which I do believe is a very very very good thing – people should not criticize people who make the planet a better place for making a lot of money – because we need the Big Bad Corporate America to get engaged and they’re not going to get engaged unless they can make money doing it, that’s what they find on the bottom line: they will increase shareholder value, you don’t do that by creating expenses, you do it by making money and there are ways to do that and make the planet better. All of that said Mark and I haven’t taken a penny out of the company and we keep putting everything back in to hopefully spread the message more.

W: What effects do you think the recent study regarding cancer-causing contaminants found in bottled water by the Environmental Working Group will have?

EY: I think that the very next move that will be made will be by the bottling side, and they won’t be so overt about it. You’re going to have a lot of people come out and basically question the validity of that testing. And by the way, the original study that was about our tap waster that was so awful, people questioned the validity of how that testing was done, but nobody really listened. We heard that tap water was bad, that there were pharmaceuticals in there, and all this terrible stuff… “uh-oh!” And the other people questioned the validity of it, that gets a lot of news, but the seed had been planted.

So now what happened is a different seed got planted. And the seed is “Oh, now there is all that bad stuff in the bottled water… uh-oh!” The next wave of the story will be all the big guys put out in front of the press to tell us why those tests were not valid, but once again, just like on the other side of the fence, that’s not what’s going to remain in the country’s collective mindset. What will remain is “Hmm… I’m not buying exactly what I thought.” You can look at 30 years of marketing out the window.

What’s most important that people know – and this is what’s more important than any of the issues – [is that] we spend $70 million to clean up water bottles that are in our waste streams. The problem in this country, where we take this water for granted, is that the infrastructure is starting to crumble; we’re not putting much money into it, that budget gets cut every year, yet we’re going to spend $70 million to cleaning up those bottles in the waste stream. What we all need to be focused on whether you’re Pepsi, Coke or Tappening, on either end of the spectrum, is we need to invest money in the infrastructure that brings water to our homes and there are a lot of ways to do that, including saving the $70 million that it takes to clean up those bottles of bottled water.

W: Any last thoughts?

EY: Go to the website. Get an education. Make your own decision.