Rhode Island International Film Festival 2009

"Tapped," a documentary about how the bottle water industry is reeking havoc on the environment, examines the role of the bottled water industry and its' effects on our health, climate change, pollution, and our reliance on oil.Bottled water doesn't just come from your grocery store. It comes from small town across America where citizens argue their way of life and ecosystem have been disrupted as a result of corporations coming in and claiming ownership of the public's water supply. Tapped takes the audience to the first stage in bottled water manufacturing- the oil refineries that produce the main ingredients for plastic bottles. We see what life is like in a fence-line community next to the number one manufacturer of Paraxylene, the primary ingredient in PET plastic. Eighty percent of the paraxylene produced goes into the PET bottles used by America's big three water giants - Nestle, Coke and Pepsi. Only 20% of bottled water containers are recycled in the U.S. Every day Americans dump 30 million single-serve plastic water bottles into landfills. 'Tapped' reveals starling recycling statistics and explains how Nestle, Coke and Pepsi fight recycling legislation that has demonstrated a 97% success rate when implemented.Because of America's poor recycling rate, much of our plastic ends up in the Pacific ocean. Specifically in an area know as Plastic Stew - an area twice the size of Texas where the ration of plastic to plankton is 46:1.'Tapped' highlights how everyday heroes have taken on the fight for our most precious resource - water.