Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was snowboarding in upstate New York when it occurred to him: if a ski space can promote its personal branded bottled water, why can’t an environmental group do the identical? It was the late nineties. Kennedy had lately helped type the Waterkeeper Alliance, a community of environmental teams devoted to cleansing up polluted waterways. In 1999, to assist this work, he co-founded Keeper Springs bottled water. Michael (Aquadoc) Campana, who was a professor of hydrogeology and water-resources administration at Oregon State College, later wrote a weblog publish entitled “Waterkeeper Alliance’s Bottled Water Boondoggle,” through which he in contrast Kennedy’s funding technique to “a church operating a brothel to generate profits to assist its mission.” Campana listed the negatives: “Plastic bottles. Expense. Transportation prices and GHG emissions. Undermining assist for public water provide techniques. And so forth.” The Occasions referred to as Kennedy’s plan “seemingly incongruous.” New York journal requested, “So, he’s promoting the water to be able to reserve it?”
However Kennedy persevered. Keeper Springs confirmed up on grocery store cabinets alongside Evian. Its bottles have been made out of as much as fifty per cent recycled PET plastic. A Tiffany designer got here up with a purple, white, and blue label that includes a mountain lake. The Manhattan advert company DeVito/Verdi did a advertising marketing campaign. “After only one sip, you’ve completed extra for the atmosphere than most politicians,” an early advert learn. “To 532 endangered species it’s holy water,” one other went. A 3rd advert imagined the East River within the 12 months 2026—the distant future on the time—with, because the Occasions famous, “New York’s skyline serving as a panoramic backdrop” whereas “a good looking girl swims in azure water” alongside dolphins.
Sounds good. However gross sales have been sluggish. “We misplaced cash,” Chris Bartle, Kennedy’s law-school roommate at U.Va. and a Keeper Springs co-founder, has stated. In 2006, the corporate reportedly offered 100 thousand circumstances, however demand ran dry and Waterkeepers grew weary. “They have been skeptical of the packaging,” Bartle defined lately. “Nobody believed we have been gonna succeed, and PET recycling was only a joke,” he added. “It was a heroic effort, however Bobby and I simply couldn’t bridge that hole.” Round 2013, Keeper Springs hung up its dipper.
Like Arrowhead, Poland Springs, and Zephyrhills, Keeper Springs had used Nestlé as a bottler and a distributor. Amongst Nestlé’s water sources was a mountain spring in California’s San Bernardino Nationwide Forest, the place, in line with regulators, the corporate had allegedly been exceeding its annual permitted allotment by greater than fifty-four million gallons. In layman’s phrases: greater than 1,000,000 bathtubs too many. It appeared just like the type of company abuse of a pure useful resource that Kennedy would have gone after in his eco-lawyering days. However he’d moved on to different issues.
For the reason that nineteen-forties, fluoride has been added to America’s drinking-water provide, in an effort to fortify the citizenry’s tooth and bones. The John Birch Society deemed this apply a communist plot—an thought echoed by Brigadier Basic Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”—however scientists say in any other case. In 2015, the C.D.C. referred to as group water fluoridation “one of many ten best public well being achievements” of the 20 th century. Kennedy disagrees, although not on anti-Marxist grounds. He has described fluoride as “an industrial waste related to arthritis, bone fractures, bone most cancers, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental problems, and thyroid illness.” In early November, shortly earlier than Donald Trump tapped him as the pinnacle of the Division of Well being and Human Providers, Kennedy spoke to NBC. “I feel fluoride is on its means out,” he stated. “I feel the quicker that it goes out, the higher.” It might start to exit on January twentieth, he added, however he did not advocate fluoride-free toothpastes for this courageous new world.
As for any dusty bottles of Keeper Springs mendacity round: sip rigorously. In response to a 2009 chemical evaluation, there was fluoride in Kennedy’s bottled water. Every serving of Keeper Springs, this evaluation decided, contained as much as 1.3 milligrams of the mineral per litre. That’s the next focus than is present in most faucet water. Bartle laughed when a caller lately pointed this out. “That’s hilarious,” he stated. “I didn’t know that.” Bartle referred to as again a short while later. His spouse had jogged his reminiscence. “For some time, we had a supply in upstate New York the place the water was naturally fluoridated,” he stated. “These two Iranian guys owned it. It was a fairly neat situation, however we didn’t stick with them for lengthy.” In any case, he added, Kennedy didn’t appear to have a difficulty with fluoride again then. “I by no means heard it talked about.” ♦
