The End of Untouched Purity: What the Perrier Scandal Tells Us About the Future of Bottled Water

For decades, bottled water brands have built their reputation on one foundational idea: purity. Spring-fed, glacier-derived, or mountain-filtered — the promise was always that nature had done the work. Companies simply bottled it.

But this story is under growing pressure, both from nature and from regulation. The recent scandal involving Perrier — long one of the bottled water industry's icons — is a case in point. Due to increasing contamination concerns, Perrier has begun treating its spring water before bottling, ending a chapter of its history defined by the claim that its water needed no treatment at all.

While this was a regulatory response, it’s hard not to see a broader shift coming. In my view, this could mark the start of a new era for the bottled water industry — one in which companies can no longer compete purely on the image of an untouched source, but instead on the strength of their ability to make water safe and clean again.

Photo by Paras Kapoor on Unsplash

A changing water landscape

The backdrop to this shift is well known, though not always acknowledged in bottled water marketing: our water sources are increasingly exposed to contamination. Agricultural runoff, nitrates, PFAS, microplastics, and even pharmaceutical residues are showing up in groundwater and springs. And climate change is making things worse by altering hydrological flows, drying aquifers, and increasing the concentration of pollutants in water sources during droughts.

In Europe, regulators have tightened standards. New testing regimes have been implemented. And brands that once relied on exemptions or legacy authorizations are now being asked to prove that their water is as clean as they claim — not just once, but consistently. In this new context, it’s not surprising that some long-standing narratives are being challenged.

A shift in how bottled water competes

What does this mean for the industry?