The hottest drink in America is water with bubbles.

Long a kitchen table staple in European households, sparkling water is making inroads in the U.S. thanks largely to Americans’ waning interest in soda. Between 2009 and 2014, the volume of carbonated bottled water sold in the U.S. has increased by 56.4 percent, according to data from Euromonitor International, a market research firm. Soda drinking declined sharply during the same period.

Still, sparkling water sales are a fraction of soda sales. The U.S. soda market is worth about $39 billion, according to Euromonitor. The market for unflavored sparkling water, flavored sparkling water and “functional” water — a category that includes flavored still water and enhanced still water like Smartwater — is just $4 billion. Read more

Remunicipalization is big word for a simple concept: it’s the process of bringing a formerly privatized service or asset back under public control. For residents and taxpayers, remunicipalization is often the logical conclusion after private water corporations fail to deliver on their promises. For corporations like Veoila and Suez that earn profits from taking over municipal water systems, remunicipalization is a major threat to their business model. And that threat is growing every year.

According to a new book from the Transnational Institute and other organizations, the rate of remunicipalization is “accelerating dramatically”:

“Over the last 15 years, 235 cases of water remunicipalization have been recorded in 37 countries, impacting on more than 100 million people. Moreover the pace of remunicipalization is accelerating dramatically, doubling in the 2010-2015 period compared with 2000-2010.”

City leaders and residents across the globe are reclaiming their water systems from private profiteers and ensuring that access to clean water remains a human right for every citizen. Last year activists in Detroit took their case to the United Nations. Since 2003, 33 water systems in the United States alone have been brought back under public control in places as diverse as Indianapolis, IN, Stockton, CA and Cameron, TX. Additionally 10 more local governments in the US are working to remunicipalize water services. Read more

Levi’s has announced it’s saved 1 billion liters of water in its manufacturing process. That’s enough to fill 400 Olympic-size pools. That’s enough to make a huge water-footprint dent. That’s enough to provide H20 for days for all of its high-waisted-wearing hipster clientele in New York.

Paul Dillinger, Levi’s vice president of Global Product Innovation, said at a panel Tuesday at South by Southwest that the company has tracked results since 2011 when it began using less water in its finishing process. The reduction efforts include eliminating water during stone washes and combining multiple wet cycles.

During the panel, which was moderated by HuffPost Impact, Dillinger also called on consumers to wash their jeans less frequently. Read more

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Call them the fortunate ones: Nearly 4,000 California companies, farms and others are allowed to use free water with little oversight when the state is so bone dry that deliveries to nearly everyone else have been severely slashed.

Their special status dates back to claims made more than a century ago when water was plentiful. But in the third year of a drought that has ravaged California, these “senior rights holders” dominated by corporations and agricultural concerns are not obliged to conserve water. Read more