Comment from Charlotte Metcalf, executive director, South African National Bottled Water Association in response to http://www.fastmoving.co.za/news/supplier-news-17/sodastream-sa-calls-for-bottling-companies-to-reveal-water-sources-and-plans-in-cape-town-11357.

“SodaStream South Africa’s Managing Director Francois Dippenaar’s finger pointing is disingenuous and seeks to create the false impression that using the SodaStream product would not exacerbate the drought while that of bottlers of packaged beverages would.

“In this way, Sodastream shamefully misinforms and misdirects the very consumers it should be helping to educate so that they can make decisions grounded in fact as opposed to those based on scaremongering.

“SodaStream’s business is based on the fact that people take water from the tap (the municipal source) and ‘turn it’ into sparkling water by carbonation. This municipal source – the tap – is the very resource that could run dry and use thereof has been limited by water restrictions put in place by the City of Cape Town. The bottlers Dippenaar refers to do not utilise this source.

“Further, SodaStream’s own plastic carbonating bottles are made from PET, a fact that Dippenaar neglects to mention but which is proudly published on its web site in an answer to the frequently asked question ‘Are SodaStream’s products recyclable’. (http://www.sodastream.co.za/faq/)”

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