'World News' Hits the Bottle Again

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You know it's summer when your favorite shows start reruns, but most people don't expect reruns of television news. Yet ABC news looked like one on July 9.

ABC "World News with Charles Gibson" followed up it's July 8 hit piece on bottled water, with a second hit piece the next evening.

"There are billions and billions and billions of these [water bottles] that end up in landfills every year," correspondent Ryan Owens said to an unidentified man.

Owens report beat up bottled water using the same points as the earlier report: that it is environmentally damaging because the bottles end up in landfills and plastic is created using fossil fuels. He quoted the mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah - one city that has banned the bottle.

“We just need to get away from these wasteful environmentally disastrous consumer habits that have been developed and get back to drinking water out of the tap,” said Salt Lake City’s mayor Rocky Anderson to ABC.

Owens also said Anderson calls bottled water "the greatest marketing scam in history."

But a spokesman from the bottled water industry just sees the industry as an easy target in the green craze because of its high visibility.

“People are scrambling and looking for ways to go green,” said Stephen R. Kay Vice President of Communications for the International Bottled Water Association to the Business & Media Institute.

“While all beverages have their role in a marketplace with an abundance of drink choices, consumers are choosing bottled water as a refreshing, hydrating beverage and as an alternative to others that may contain calories, caffeine, sugar, artificial colors, alcohol or other ingredients, which they wish to moderate or avoid,” Kay said in a press release in April.